Garden Railway Saturday; A 32mm Scale Photoplank

So what do you do when you're building garden railway trains. but don't have a garden railway on which to photograph them?  You build a photoplank.

I've been doing this for years, for projects (model railway and art/sculpture) in various scales for about 20 years.

At the Llangollen show, we bought a full circle of Mamod track to use as a test circuit, and there were some scrappy bits of broken rails in there too, so thought they'd do for a photoplank.

Initially, I thought about something reasonably large...

...but switched to a plank, which would allow it to be kept and carried in a smaller, more transportable box.

Hanging basket liner on the edges, sand for the ballast.

And in its transport box, with a Binnie skip for size.

And showing its use, out on location near Tanygrisau.

And in print :)

 

Hornby: The Collector. An Industrial Tramway in 00 (Part 1)

As mentioned in the last post about The Collector, I was in the throes of moving house last year. Realising I needed to bank some content to cover things whilst I moved, I thought I'd do two projects back to back; Damems, and Burneside. Naturally I got carried away; I ended up making three seperate dioramas for this one, which is just what you want whilst trying to pack up and move...

This came off the back of the Pensnett Trading Estate Build; I wanted to do another one using Hornby buildings, but a bit more rural, with a bit more modelling than the 'out of the box' beginner angle used on the earlier build.

The real Burneside Tramway was an industrial line (network technically) centered on the James Cropper Paper Mills in the Southern Lake District. Lightly laid and worked by a pair of internal combustion shunters, the lines pottered between various small mills and units in adjoining villages, exchanging traffic with the mainline in Burneside itself. The line stuck to the roadsides, except for a couple of places where it ran down the road itself.

Scrapped in the 1970's when BR rationalised the main line to Windemere, odd traces of the railway remain (with the paper firm happily still in business) along with both locomotives. I thought a project inspired by it would be just the thing, as it would allow me to make use of my Ruston 48ds model.

Here's one of the kits, the Town Bank; I bought a variety of buildings, some already built by previous owners, but planned on repainting and detailing everything.

Scene 1 would be one of the village mills. Upcyling the Diesel Depot and water tower used on Pensnett, at this stage I was thinking about using some of the modern resin buildings Hornby sell (the white village garage).

I didn't take many pics of this one under construction; this one will have to suffice, but shows the effect used for the photographs; every time I've been to the real Burneside, it's been chucking it down, so I thought I'd replicate that on the model. Once complete, the scene was drizzled with gloss varnish..

Locomotives; the Simplex, "Rachel" is preserved in working order at the nearby Lakeside and Haverthwaite Railway. The other loco, the Ruston 48DS, is preserved in the South-East and a bit far to go to get pictures of, but using the Hornby model would be a shortcut for this article. I'd planned to build the Simplex if I had time (in the end, with the house move, I didn't of course).

I used one of the open-cabbed versions of the loco for a slightly more vintage feel.

It was given a repaint into a plain, slightly battered livery.

An early test shoot, using another model in the collection, a Peckett.

So that's the first board; more coming, on the countryside, and the village.

 

Warhammer Wednesday: Space Marine Rhino

Last year I hit a point where I needed a bit of a pallete-cleanser from model railways. The Gerry Anderson stuff kind of hit the mark, then I found myself returning to the world of Warhammer.

I've not done much modelling with the products of Citadel Miniatures in recent years- though I love the books (anything by Sandy Mitchell or Dan Abnett), really like the artwork, and read the mag ("White Dwarf") pretty regularly.

This tempted me back. When I was about 10, my introduction to Games Workshop was with my mate Owen who spent a tenner he really wasn't meant to spend, on a kit for a Rhino APC. I was instantly taken with Warhammer (the blue boxes with the red/yellow trim! In the Grim Darkness of the Far Future, there was a surprisingly bold colour pallette).

I got the game box set (happy memories of sitting for tea at my grans house one Autumn night, piecing the figures together and desperate to get home and glue them together). And pretty inevitably, I got a Rhino of my own. A tenner was a lot of money to me at that age, but I was also aware that it was a really well-moulded kit in decent quality plastic, and well thought-out too so it could be customised.

The modern take on the Rhino has a crazy number of parts, and the quality of the moulding is impressive. Good, heavy duty plastic too. I suppose the price is in line with inflation, and I got mine from the excellent Acme Games wargaming shop in Llandudno, which I try to buy something from whenever I visit the town.

A mad amount of alternate parts and spares, to go in the bits box.

Higher level of detailing than in the 1990's, but keeps the classic look of the Rhino.

Interior details and a working ramp, nice touches.

This was the only downside- the baseplate for the floor didn't quite fit snugly and needed some filing. An unusual oversight for a kit which otherwise practically fell together.

I decided to go for a pretty bog-standard version of the Rhino, with not that much in the way of customisation. Pretty much a take on the one I built back in 1996.

Undercoated in black. Colour wise, I was unsure what to go for. I'd modelled Ultramarines (blue) in Epic, and Dark Angels (green) back in the day. I thought I wanted to do something really bold and bright this time though, and went with the Imperial Fists.

How many points for Yellow Tank? (Elder Child will get that- hello if you're reading this)

Trouble was that work and railways took over for a bit, then when it came time to do the detail painting, I'd lost the transfer sheet. Luckily I was able to source a sheet off eBay.

Now, I wasn't planning on getting into playing the games (I really, really don't have time to sit for 4 hours a day, assuming I could re-learn the rules) but I fancied taking a few forced-perspective pics out and about.

The APC got a detailing and weathering pass, then a dusting with varnish. I took it for some pics up in the hills above where we were staying in Wales... 

...where the weather continued to be vexingly overcast and moody.

I also snapped some pics on the beach at Criccieth, whilst waiting for a passing railtour excursion I was needing to photograph.

I wasn't happy with the photographs, and thought I'd have another go on the next visit to Wales, where hopefully the weather would be a bit better. I decided I needed some figures. I also didn't want to spend a fortune on a full box of figures, but found -again, through eBay- someone selling individual sprues.

There were no instructions, so putting the Marines together was a bit of trial and error.

I really liked the classic Womble-Marine design, and I'm glad it got a reintroduction.

Overall a fun project; apart from that little wobble with the floorpan of the vehicle, this was a great kit and I loved building it. It got me back into building Citadel kits, which is why 'Warhammer Wednesday' will become a semi-regular feature...

 

Hornby: The Collector. Damems in 00.

So, as I alluded to in the Christmas/New Years post, I've been busy moving house over the winter. Not too busy to make things, but far too busy to post about them. Given I've picked up a few regular gigs in the intervening period, I thought I better start posting on here again. First up, a project mostly completed over the summer (alongside packing up the house) for the Hornby Collectors Club; Damems in 00.

Damems was my local station, until we moved (the shot above with the 101 in the snow was actually the last photography session on the line before we moved).

Back during the plague times (that some of my various editors insist not be referred to these days) I decided to ease the boredom of the post-home-schooling afternoons by writing some layout planning articles for Railway Modeller Magazine. Damems seemed a logical start, as it was a place that -lockdowns permitting- I could actually visit.

Some very basic 1:1 planning underway, to get an idea of sizes.

Anyway, the piece got published, was well-received, and after a suitable gap I came back to it when needing material for the Hornby Collectors Club.  This time, I thought I'd actually build one of the layout plans I'd proposed.

Back to the basic planning again.

Reclaimed MDF board, set-track, and landscaping from foam packing material, card, and papier-mache.

Scenics underway, with cobbled sheets of unknown provenance, and Airfix level crossing, and green scatter as a base layer.

Buildings... obviously, this being a Hornby article, it was going to need to use all Hornby buildings or parts, and the article was aimed at the (relative) beginner. I hasten to point out that this rather poorly built example of the 90's Town & Country range "Bell Inn" wasn't my doing, it was bought off eBay in this condition to be a parts donor.

Stripped of parts, and the walls and so on re-fashioned to look a bit more like the real Damems stationmasters house.

For render, I used thin sandpaper.

The station building itself used more of the bits from the Bell Inn, and some MDF, but this time faced in scribed card for the planks.  Both of the above being completed during a holiday away, to the amusement of precisely none of the family who had to put up with me working in the evenings on the table in the caravan.

Back in T'North, and shooting outside on the drive. Not terrific, given it was early evening (typically at the weekends it had rained heavily and I was up against the deadline, so fitting in the shoot after work).

Not long after, I decided to punt the layout towards British Railway Modelling magazine, who picked it up, requiring a re-shoot. This had to be fit-in after the move though, and was a bit tricky (again, weather). In the end I shot the pics in the basement, using some borrowed studio lights. It was also a bit of a scrabble for figures, details, and trains, as I wasn't sure where the boxes with them all in were.

The article in the Collectors Club magazine, and hopefully shortly it will be in BRM too.

At the same time as I was doing this, I was working on yet another piece for the Collectors Club to try and bank some articles before the move. More on that soon.