Garden Railway Saturday; Poppleton Community Railway Nursery

Just a short post today; the next instalment of our 32mm scale project, and a trip to the ever-brilliant Poppleton Community Railway Nursery in York for plants.

We've been coming here for nearly a decade, off and on. It's a former British Rail, before that British Railways, before that London-North-Eastern-Railway, plant nursery. Here, they once grew the flowers and greenery which would be despatched to stations all over the network. In later years it fell into ruin, before being resurrected by a volunteer group who are bringing it back to life bit by bit, every year. 

We needed some plants for the garden line, and what better than a garden centre which has a working narrow gauge railway running around the place?

As I say, we've been coming here for years. I'd heard about this place years ago, and visited with Younger Child on something of a whim. An afternoon of cake and plants did the trick, we've been back pretty much every year excepting the Plaguey Times.

So yes; another piece in the mag, albeit one with no actual modelling. We planted up a lot of what we bought here on the visit, there's still more awaiting the Spring and the finalising of the scenic work. Should be some actual model-making coming up soon, we've just nailed 4 projects in the last fortnight, which should be coming up some time soon.

 

A silly winter project, for the Wolf Express

A lot of modellers like to produce a nice little project over the winter. This Christmas, I've seen beautifully detailed N gauge loco sheds, nostalgic Triang period-pieces, intricately detailed miniature engineering builds...

... I decided to see what I could do with the Wolf Express set. Well I wasn't about to sell or give it away, I'd found myself really taken with it.  That said, I wasn't keen to spend a lot of money on this build.

Bargain Corner at a certain Swedish Furniture Emporia supplied a suitable, cheap baseboard.

Some scrap wood from the pile a bit more material for it, a top layer to sit on some plywood risers.

The track was hot glued down.

Landform from foam packing material.

Then uggins of papier mache, and some sawdust to fill the gaps under the track.

More sawdust to provide a bit of texture (and speed up the drying time).

Trees were picked up this year, and last, from the local garden centre in their post-Christmas sales.

Several of these, purchased for a couple of quid apiece, bulked out the middle of the board after cutting down with a set of wire trimmers.

And here's the completed little project. A bit scrappy in places, admittedly, but it was fit in around other work so was done in a bit of a hurry.

Against a plain backdrop.

A suitably more festive backdrop!

Like I said, not the most serious of projects. I'll probably upcycle the bits and pieces of it (keeping the wolves of course, they're awesome) but it was nice to do a bit of a build over the winter. Maybe next year, I'll do something a touch more serious.

Trainset Tuesday; Wild Republic "Wolf Express"

Oh dear, it was all going so well. The first instalment of Trainset Tuesday was a proper layout, and now... this.

This must honestly be one of the oddest interpretations of the term 'train set' I've ever come across.

Let's not beat about the bush, this is tat. Kitsch tat. Cheaply made, poor quality, kitsch tat. And I really like it. See, I've had a thing about wolves and huskies since one of my primary school teachers used to regale me with tales of her sled-racing dogs. And of course from reading "Call of the Wild" when I was about 10. 

I bought this weird little set a little while ago, for no other reason than it appealed to the part of me that likes cheap tat (to my wife's despair). And wanting a bit of a silly little project to keep me occupied this winter, I dug it back out of storage.

The track- it makes up an oval about 30cm by 50cm, and is rather flexible and poor... that said, it clips together nicely and when it's attached, it sits pretty flat.

The, for want of a better word, locomotive. MamaWolf here, battery operated and with articulated legs.

Quite the superchonk! This time, with something for scale. I could be a hand-model, honestly.

Power is via a single AA battery, in a rather poor battery compartment.

Surgery time!  The switch was a bit intermittent, so I needed to give it a bit of work. The rather poor quality of the wolf meant dismantling and rebuilding needed to be done with a lot of care.

The 'train', two puppies, with their sinister black eyes.

Not the nicest view for the poor thing! The coupling bar is sturdy bit a bit obtrusive.

And there's the train. Non-reversing, and just fast enough to whizz around without flipping itself off the tracks. Though to be fair, considering it's cheap roots, it actually works fairly well.

I better do a proper train set next time, as any hope I had of becoming a 'proper' model railway blogger may have just taken a knock with this one!  That said, I really like this set, and had a project in mind for it... more on which in Part Two...

Hornby Collectors Club: Winter 2025. Tamed Giants

It's interesting, the projects I do for the Hornby Collector's Club. Sometimes, I'm fully immersed in some big construction or project that fires my enthusiasm from the get-go, like the Industrial Tramway or the repainted Lionel Gauge 2 stock. Then other times, I find myself struggling for something achievable in the timeframe. I've two big builds underway for the HCC, but real life and work majorly impacted me in the summer, and I ended up somewhat scrabbling around for something I could send off to hit the deadline.

Inspiration struck on the summertime visit to the NRM outstation in Shildon, and the concept of the railway centre. A contained site, a demonstration line, and unusual (often large) locomotives. The above shot was from an earlier visit there, and the Furness Railway no.20 pottering about on the demo line.

Ah, the perennial Hornby favourite, the "Flying Scotsman". My own feelings on this loco are mixed. I don't like how much of a money pit it's been for the nation, and I really, really, hate that dull livery. But then I have very fond memories of cabbing the loco on the SVR in the 1990's, and one of my first 'proper' model locomotives was a Hornby rendition of this machine, in LNER green.

And there it is! Because of the timescale issues, I was having to rely on old projects to take the pics, so this was a very, very old diorama, built back in the days of the Holyhead article...

...and a rebuild of the Tramway mill board.

There was also a bit of studio-type shooting too, to fill out the piece a little.

And here it is, in print. Not my favourite article, but then it was tainted a little for me by the events going on in the background, with my work life and real life.

Still, all being well, the next project should be a little more impressive, back to the world of Tinplate clockwock trains.