Railway Research Trip: Aberystwyth

Another trip for researching Garden Rail pieces whilst we were in Wales, and blimey, look at that weather! What a difference to Corris...

The law- that all steam locomotives waiting at a platform have to have an old man standing next to them. Bonus points for the dog. Only minor annoyance here is that it wasn't the BR Blue loco, but maybe next time...

The main target of the visit, railway-wise, the new museum. Well I say new, it's been here a few years now, but this was the first time we'd had chance to pop in.

Rather nice miniature loco in the atrium; explains why I couldn't find it to snap a pic of at York the other week.

Yellow Train; spotting this Wins The Game.

The maintenance train is another potential candidate for Garden Rail...

...as is this little beast. Actually we have a kit for one of these in the 'need to get around to it' pile.

Arty shot.

Cattle wagon; we acquired some garden-scale sheep, so it might be worth knocking one or two of these together at some point.

This was my favourite in the museum, I love a chunky little tank loco, and the accompanying carriage looks quite tempting.

Final thoughts? The museum was absolutely worth a look around. It's nicely done, well laid out and with an interesting mix of vehicles preserved safe from the elements. We've only ever visited the Rheidol to sample the cafes at either end of the line (the one here at Aberystwyth this time, very nice indeed), and we're thinking we might give it a go riding the trains at some point this summer.

 

This month in British Railway Modelling; Summer Fair (part two)

Continuing the build of the Summer Fair for British Railway Modelling Magazine...

I decided to incorporate a portable miniature railway; a few attempts were made at scratch-building the track, before I decided to just use Z (with some repositioning of the sleepers on the ancient Marklin rails).

The train itself, modified from an old Ertl diecast Thomas the Tank Engine range 'Edward' and 'Troublesome Trucks'.

It's probably a little overscale for  a portable line, but it looks the part (and ended up inspiring the next article I did for BRM, a back-garden miniature railway).

I thought it would be fun to have some inflatables in the scene, for that colouful vibe. Oven-baked polymer was used to create...

...a bouncy castle, slide, and some paddling pools.

The 'inland beach' concept is something I've seen a few places in recent years, so thought I'd incorporate it. Not least because I had some seaside-themed figures in the spares box.

A slightly-chaotic, jumbled scene.

Space Hoppe racing, using oversized map-pins.

I still needed some colour in the scenes, so a lot of the figures gained balloons made using map-pins, for that full-on, pre 'worrying about waste and the planet' atmosphere. When I was young we went to a village fair with school, with the game of 'how many free balloons can you get from the stalls', followed by inevitably 'how many of them can you save from getting popped on the bus back to school'.

On a similar note, I had some plastic spheres from work, and they were painted up as beachballs to scatter around the scene; again, that summer atmosphere. I tried to arrange cameos with mainly the kids playing with them.

Finally, custom-made signage and posters...in case you can't tell, I've been getting into practising for going back to doing a bit of kids book illustrations lately. Hallie (in the bunches), and her friends, and various suitably summer fair-themed scenes for the posters and the like around the village.

This turned out to be just the first of several bright, colourful, summer-themed pieces done for BRM (indeed another one, the seaside toy shop, is in the same issue!) and I'll probably be getting a reputation for doing kitsch tat. I better do something really grim and industrial soon...

 

This month in British Railway Modelling; Summer Fair (part one)

A real beast of a project this time (and split into the next post too!) 

I don't think the editor was expecting me to turn in quite so much material for this article, and to be fair, I probably did get a wee bit carried away. But bear in mind that despite my dour Midlander background and personality, I do have a bit of a guilty pleasure for kitsch and colourful tat, and anyway I needed a counterpoint to the grim, depressing winter...

When the editor was dishing out the projects, she mentioned a village summer fair; having done a few summer-themed projects relatively recently, I figured I had enough in stock to do this one. Getting into the build though, I quickly realised just how much this scene was going to need, to look convincing...

A pack of Gaugemaster tents formed a big part of the project; they're nice mouldings, and respond well to weathering to bring out some nicely moulded crease-lines and similar. Less fun was doing the guy-ropes, which proved to be a fiddly exercise in sewing.

I decided to see how many "Hot Fuzz" references I could sneak into the scenes too.

Another useful space-filler were the game stalls; we've done plenty of these with Scouts over the years whilst fundraising at actual village galas and fairs, so I had an idea in my head how I wanted it to look. The Wills market barrows would provide the starting point.

Cutting down plastic rod for the 'tin can alley'. Each stall had a different themed game, like tombola's and bottle-pulls.

I was a little stumped how to do giant soft toys for the prizes, then turned to Langley Miniature Models n scale animals.

Paper and marker pens for the canvas canopy, and map-pins for the balloons.

A colourful little jumble of stalls.

The bottle-pull stall, run by the local Scouts, very much based on our own activities (though the logo is the old one, as nominally the scene is set around mid 90's to mid 2000's... the eventual plan is to incorporate a lot of this stuff into my planned St.Morvyth's layout, if I ever get around to building it).

The Scouts in particular need a mention; you can get Scout figures commercially, but they tend to be 1950's-era (so old uniforms with caps), and all boys. As even in the 1990's we were a modern mixed-gender outfit, I ended up having to paint up some of the other figures instead with representations of the uniform (the black and white 'necker colours are those of our current group).

There needed to be an eating area, so the trusty Metcalfe picnic tables were used for this.

Testing out the scene; I'd built everything as separate elements to blend together, which would allow me to awkwardly work on them without having them stuck on the board, and try and arrange some nicer compositions.

This is how it all looked when bought together, and everything blended in (and combined with the Port Eden Tramway board to hint at the village of St.Morvyth just off the board).

On the cover! Very nice.

Anyway, more on some of the other details like the bouncy castles in the next part, tomorrow.

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.