Triang Thursday; A Retro Test Track

Time for a bit of fun with Triang Met-Camms! In fact, time for the first of what's going to (hopefully) be a regular monthly series, focussing on Triang Trains, which I've been getting into collecting lately.

 I've a soft-spot for the real Met-Camms, helped by frequent trips on the KWVR's class 101 (I know the Triang model isn't a 101, technically, rather it's based -however loosely- on the earlier Lightweights but near-enough)

The 101 in its current condition, BR blue with centre headcode.

This is one of my favourite models in my collection. It was my first Non-Thomas model in the 80's (though, of course, became Daisy when 6 year old me had the train set out). This belonged to my Dad and his brothers when they were kids in the 60's.

In Christmas 2025 I bought myself this. I'd already bought one for my Dad (being as I'd effectively nicked his original one!), and after I'd bought it for him and wrapped it up, I thought what the hell, who doesn't like a train set for Christmas?

Of course, whilst setting up an oval of track on the dining room table hits the nostalgia buttons, it's not a great long-term solution. On top of which, with a growing collection of Triang that could do with running-in, and the need to write-up a piece for the Hornby Collectors Club, I thought it was time to raid the scrap-wood pile and build myself a test track with the contents of the set, and a bit of shopping...

The unit itself has had a bit of a wash and scrub-up by the Seller, including the mechanical gubbins, and runs rather sweetly.

I had this board leftover from an earlier project; it's a desktop reclaimed from the scrap pile at work, with added framework (the exposed edges of the desk were rough chipboard). Of course it means it's pretty astonishingly heavy, but hey, battle-ship quality.

Scenery-wise it needed to be simple; this was going to be stored against a wall in the workshop, so whilst there could be a bit of landscaping, it couldn't project much higher than platform level.

Out with the papier-mache! One benefit to things coming with too much packaging material I suppose.

A mix of hand-painting and spraying followed.

One dodge I was experimenting with; rather than scatter, I thought I'd try textured spray-paint, then colour again over the top of it. Unfortunately, Spring was so miserable and wet, that the day I picked to paint on meant spraying took ages, and didn't set properly.

So it was out with the flock and things after all. No static grass here, this was going to be properly retro.

Ballast was a problem. I didn't have any to hand, but DID have some reptile-gravel used for an upcoming BRM project. I was a bit too light in tone though, so I ended up washing the board over with watered-down grey poster paint.

The finished layout- well I say finished. That big space in the middle might benefit a bit of work, and a building a little more contemporary to the rest of the structures (it's a Hornby/Pola shop, contemporary with the later DMU's but stands out a bit compared to the other buildings. Maybe some proper Triang Minic buildings might look good in there).

The DMU from the set looks quite at home, whizzing around the layout...

Whilst I couldn't build the scenery up too high, I could dig-down, so there's a river, bridged with the concrete sidewalls from the elevated track set.

Level crossing and keepers hut.  The gates, and all the buildings, are removable for storage.

The venerable tunnel, with scatter stuck onto it to try and blend it in a bit. Well, as much as a totally arbitrary tunnel can be, plonked on the board. It's a different one to the one from the rough planning stage, which was my childhood-era one (I couldn't bring myself to modify my old one!)

The station is, like most of these, missing its chimney. One for the long-term jobs list. Signal box and water tower completed the station side of things.

One of my BR-blue examples...

...and a later-issue set, though 3-cars is about the limit with this small layout. It's proving to be a useful test-track for my growing Triang collection (for example the likes of"Polly" and "Nellie" look right at home on short goods trains). Of course, it's a bit limiting, but it's given me a taste for this. A bigger layout, but in the same retro style, beckons...

Medical Monday; A Synthetic Thoracotomy

It's been a busy few months at work (it's the NHS, when is it ever NOT busy) and whilst a lot of what I've been making is a bit... shall we say, graphic... to post on here, I thought I'd share this recent synthetic trainer I've knocked-up for the ED. Or Accident and Emergency, as we boringly used to call it. I don't know, maybe it's ED to make us more appealing to our prospective new American owners when we get privatised. Or Privatized, with a Z, as we'll be totally American-owned, not just the patient data.

Sorry, I'm rambling. So, the scenario was patient who'd been stabbed in the chest, nicking his heart. He dies on the table, and the Doctors have to crack open his chest and go-in for emergency heart surgery. Open the rib-cage and stop the heart bleeding. We do this on our CRISIS course, with whole pig torsos, which is graphic, if useful. That's in our lab, however, and wheeling a whole headless, legless pig through through the waiting room was likely to get us lynched, so I got asked if I could knock up a synthetic trainer.

After some thoughts, and experiments with plastic buckets, barrels and things, I thought about using a Rescusi Annie.

You know, these dudes/dudettes.

We have a full-body one, but it's too nice and useful to chop up. I remembered though that the legend that is Dr.Blood (yes, really) had a stack of knackered old Rescusi Annie torsos down in the basement of horrors which are the ED offices. Mainly because I dumped them down there a few years ago when we were desperate for space. I carried out a raid down there and retrieved them.

And here we are, this one is pretty representative of the state they were in, but then this would need to be a scrapper anyway.

Probably should have put the tigger warning here.

First pass at making a sternum, nice and strong... though I quickly realised this was stupid, as the point was to cut through it. A bit of strategic chopping later;

and a raid of the scrap pile, produced some cable troughing. All will be revealed in a few pictures time.

For the ribs, I turned to these ET tubes. These go out of date pretty quickly, and get dumped on us (as the robots aren't bothered about best-before-dates on medical equipment), and we had uggins -technical term- of them.

There's that cable-trough sternum.

I needed to chop-around the wooden supports to accommodate the pipes from the neck, as the patient would still have to be intubated.

That then left the problem of how to make a heart. It needed to be rubbery, and semi-flexible. I had some balloons left over from Scouts, and figured it would be best filled with wadding.

There was -unfortunately for him- a massive, old, rather over-stuffed teddybear sat up on the shelf in the workshop, intercepted on the way to be disposed of (long story, but we have a mass of teddies donated for Peadiatric sims, and nowhere really to store them, and because they're old and used we can't give them to the actual kids ward, and the local charity shops wont take teddies. I thought he was too nice though to go to the incinerators and so he's sat in the workshops for now). A quick few minutes with a Size 22 scalpel and there was the wadding I needed. Lovers of all things cute and cuddly be reassured, a bit of suturing afterwards, and he was back up on the shelf having done his bet for medical science.

There we go, the heart in place, a bit more cable troughing (and the plastic cover for an LMA) holding it in place. That just left the need to make some lungs, and so I turned to more inflatables from Scouts.

Our Scout Group meets in a school, and we end up using beachballs for games. Partly because we have no proper storage to keep games stuff, and also because it's quite hard to damage fittings and fixtures with inflatables. We also get through LOADS of them, because kids being kids, they love to burst them. So we buy in bulk these days. I thought the group could spare these two, not least because I was building this on no budget again.

Time for a summer-vibes thoracotomy.

Ready for the operating theatre!

Speaking of, here we are... Poor sod doesn't know what's coming. We did a bit more set-dressing on the day with the fake blood and things.

Pics of the op taking place were a bit tricky, as I was driving the Sim Pad (providing the live observation figures) from a corner under a ton of machinery.

It was quite funny- the staff are so indoctrinated not to cut into our robots, they had to be reassured by me, my boss, and a senior doctor running the sum, that they could indeed go at him with the tough0cuts and knife.

Fascinating to watch the pointy-end of medical treatment, in every sense.

The op went well, the trainer did its part.

This was the condition it was in afterwards- needs a new sternum (which is fine, I pinched loads of the cable troughing out of the skips), a mended skin, the ribs mending, and one of the beachballs didn't survive the scalpel, but otherwise, an hour or so in the workshop and good to go again. 

The next one (at least, the next one I can post on here) should be a C-Section trainer. 

 

Garden Railway Saturday; P.S Models 'Slate Waste Wagon'

Just a short piece for this Garden Railway Saturday; one for Amy too, though I did the painting. We wanted a simple little wagon for her Estate Shunter to trundle about with (not least because it isn't very powerful as a loco), and this very much fit the bill.

It was a lunchtime kit; that is, something which can easily be put together in stages whilst on lunchbreak at the job. MDF construction, excellently machined out as usual from Phil Sharples Models.

Painting started with a spray coat of grey...

...then lots of weathering, streaking with colour washes, and dry-brushing browns and greys.

And here in the mag. The diesel shunter should be getting a feature relatively soon too.