A Week's Progress

 Living with Gerallt Road is proving to be interesting. Above anything else I have to say there is something important about changing scale to one outside of your comfort zone. It is literally giving me a different perspective, and I do mean that literally. Not least because it is currently at a funny level, which is distorting how I look at it.

How I view the layout, how much my glance can take in, the angle I look at it, and the distance are all different to working in larger scales. And that is making me think differently about composition and scenic construction.

As for actual progress, well, I feel it is a classic case of one step forward, one step backwards as I work out what works and what doesn't.

What I'm struggling with is first of all texture and relief, especially as I move from front to back of the layout. I'm still not sure if I can use printed materials for all the structures. I've built many iterations of the station shelter from Penybontfawr on the TVR using Scalescenes textures, but a bit of me still thinks I should use etched corrugated iron sheet. Mainly because some of the other structures I have in mind are more 3d but will be further into the layout. I'm also questioning whether it is worth modelling things that will be hidden from view 90% of the time. So, for now, I'm not discounting a return to the etched version.

As a result, I'm going through a lot of mock-ups like the one above which was primarily to check if I could live with printed windows on buildings that will actually be facing away from the viewer. It doesn't look great in close-up, but that isn't how it is going to be seen.

As for the composition of the scene, it needs something in the centre foreground. It needs to be something tat anchors the viewer's gaze but without dominating the whole scene.  A disused signal box or a crossing keepers cottage are my first thoughts.

A Tree is a Tree, for all That

 When I built Rails around the Rectory, I was relatively happy with the stand of trees, which represented the odd mix of overgrown trees that characterised the real garden at Cadeby and added much to the illusion that the Cadeby Light Railway was bigger than it was.

If I had a regret, it was that I knew I was making them to about half their real height, but somehow, the illusion worked in the context. They still towered over the stock.

Early days of forestry using Woodland Scenic armatures

Building RatR, I could at least look out and see the trees around our small holding for inspiration. I never got around to counting them all, and as on our models, there were a few hero trees, like the ashes, and others, like many of the hawthorns, that were just generic trees.

                                                                "Again, you know

There are three kinds of tree, three only, the fir and the poplar,

And those which have bushy tops to; and lastly

          That things only seem to be things."

Henry Reed, "Judging Distances." New Statesman and Nation 25, no. 628 (6 March 1943): 155

I think that when we look at a model tree, there are certain criteria we notice, if perhaps unconsciously, that either convinces us it is right or not, that they seem to be the things they are not. Some of those criteria are based on our expectation of a model, not our experience of the natural world. It is the one area where many of us end up inadvertently "modelling other models" rather than looking outside the window.

You and I, of course, have read those wonderful books by Gordon Gravett. From an early age you might have been inspired by the Bowden Cable creations of Iliffe and Doris Stokes, with their vital advice to model an actual tree. But that doesn't make us immune. We accept that it is the mature oak tree we are looking at because, well, it would be silly to model one half a metre tall.

A couple of things have brought this to mind recently.

On one of the model railway Facebook groups someone posted a photo of a photographic backscene they'd been sold as "N gauge large trees."

They could see it looked wrong but had latched on to the trees being too tall. That wasn't really the issue. Yes, they probably were too tall, but more to the point, it was clearly a picture of relatively small trees blown up rather than a photo of large mature trees.

The other thing that brought it to mind was a weekend of travel during which woods and trees were never far away. This reminded me that sometimes things are bigger than you think.

This brings us back to those trees on RatR.Model trees don't travel well and they now look much the worse for wear,so I will revisit them soon for a major refresh. .

Paxton Road. Change here for trains to Gerallt Road

 After a lot of delays, sorting out family issues and the aftermath of the house move, we finally made the trip to Wales to pick up Gerald Road from James Hilton.

It is the first time I've been back to Wales since my pre-Covid canal trip on the Monty, so we also took the opportunity to revisit Llangollen and Pontcysyllte.

We proved, something  I didn't think about until rather late in the day, that the layout can fit across the back seat of the car with the dogs in the boot. Just in case it ever gets to an exhibition.

One thing that strikes you about a visit to James's workshop is just how small his N gauge cameos are. It actually takes a few moments to process this. Gerald Road seems vast in comparison.

So, apart from moving its fictional location from Bristol to the Tanat Valley, what are my plans for it?

Well, the first stage is to do nothing until I've lived with it for a few weeks. I want to retain some elements of the original sketch, especially the mix of industrial and residential structures and the level crossing. Two aspects that I really want to think through are the huge, relatively speaking amount of foreground and the scenic wings. I suppose there is a third, which is what traffic will the sidings serve.

Zooming back to the other side of the country I have Middleton Towers in mind. A "bitsa" station, a level crossing, a lime kiln, a relatively modern aggregate loader of some sort, and then the foreground siding for general goods and domestic coal

On Display

It has been a long, hard slog with everything else going on, but now most of my models are out of their boxes and either on display or ready for use.

And the wagons from the ELR have gone to a new home.




The odd thing that struck me towards the end of the unpacking is that I genuinely do have all the stock I really need for the foreseeable future.OK there is some N gauge I wouldn't mind acquiring at some point, and a little more OO9 stock with a more mainline vibe, and some O gauge in the future. But apart from that, yes I have finally hit that point. At least, I will have done if I ever finish building the one 4mm loco kit in my stash, but even then, I have everything needed to build it.

I guess that means the focus moves back to layouts. 

Once I've made a little space in the office, Flemish Quay will get a makeover. It will mostly consist of like-for-like replacement of things damaged in the move.

The Cadeby-based layout survived rather better, but it doesn't have a natural home for display here. But I think a replacement wouldn't be too hard to build and would have a natural home. I still want to build a larger OO9 layout, but that can wait. Everything I need for this is in the house, and 90% of it is already built in terms of stock and buildings.

I'm hoping Gerald Road will do for my N gauge interest for now. That is going to be my focus for scratch building.

In OO I've got two ideas to consider. The East Coast light railway and the ex-GWR branchline. Again, almost everything is already on hand for both.

In the garden, the first 7/8ths track has been laid but needs to be lived with. I think I have a site for the 16mm line, which will primarily be for the grandchildren.

That might sound like a lot, but with everything on hand , which it hasn't been in the past when some materials were stored several hundred yards from the studio, I'm hoping to work in parallel on them.


So what is left?

Well, three or four other projects. 

There is a 4mm tramway idea, still floating around with Kinver in mind.

OOn3 for a fictional line somewhere along the border between Wales and Shropshire

And finally, 7mm, both standard and narrow gauge. All of which will probably begin as micros.