Time Flies By (When You're a Driver of a Train)

Since the last service on the Eaugate Light Railway I've not even sat on a loco. I couldn't even bear to sit on Teddy without a line to run it on.

But the last couple of weeks have gotr me back in the driving seat. Frist of all, on a Ruston on the Apedale's "field railway"

TBH, it was even easier to drive than Teddy. I believe this is a bit of a hybrid, with the bodywork from a later loco. Many, many years ago I nearly bought an ex NCB Ruston. But it had two major drawbacks. It was 2ft 6" gauge...and still in the coal mine. Could I be tempted again?

Then this weekend has been a gala bonanza around Stoke.

As well as Apedale's Penhryn-themed event, with Cegin, it has been the Rudyard Hunslet gala.

Unfortunately, I'm nursing a cold, the weather has been dire, and Mum's mobility has nose-dived.

I'd reconciled myself to sitting at home instead, when I discovered Steve was bringing the There and Back Light Railway to Hanley Park for the day. You might remember Steve is the custodian of my Tug.

The heritage day event was very poorly attended, compared to the Longton Carnival, but it is still early days; the pavilion cafe has only just re-opened as a community hub, and the park still has an issue with drug users.

The upside is that it gave Steve and me time to catch up on a lot of things, and future plans.

It also gave me a chance to drive his Thomas II. I remember seeing what I think was the second one built at the Midlands Model Engineering show back in about 1980, and falling a little bit in love with it, but less so than with the 5" gauge RHDR "The Bug" that was also there. In the flesh/metal they seem to have even more character than in photos.

And I can now confirm it was an absolute joy to drive.

Mum's new wheelchair

The future plans, and the one aborted plan I can't share yet, will have to wait until a later post. But the cogs in my brain are slowly beginning to turn. Especially where steam is involved.

Meanwhile, back to smaller scales, I'm spending this afternoon trying to finally clear the trackbed for a permanent 7/8ths line, now that I can get to most of its length. And Tom Eivers very kindly picked up my Ruston from Chris Stockdale, so it is now only a couple of miles away from me. The handover might have to involve a pint in The Black Lion but it is a sacrifice I'm prepared to make.

It is bigger than you think

 It has been an odd seven days. Odd in a way I can't quite put my finger on.

It started with the Chatsworth Country Fair.

We got free entry as part of our annual membership. Otherwise I don't think it would make sense to spend £37 each to effectively get entry to what is basicaly a pop up shopping centre. I remeber when country fairs actually seemed to have some connection to the country. OK, there were a few stalls of that kind, I'm always a sucker for the ferrets, but mostly it was endless rows of shops selling nearly identical tat.

At least there were some good displays of vintage vehicles, but they felt very much like an afterthought.

 
On Sunday I finally assembled the Tim Horn baseboard for the Penrhyn themed OO9 layout.

And that explains the title of this post

There is a lot more vertical space to fill than I'd realised,

I'm struggling to work out how to handle the issue. I really don't want to use a tunnel. Apart from knowing that every derailment would happen in it, it would ruin some of the views I want to recreate of a train glimpsed in the landscape through a dense foreground of trees.

I suspect I'm going to have to do something a little unconventional when I start cutting the foamboard. 

The first few OO9 layouts I built all had very strong vertical elements, but they all had major drawbacks with either the weight or the strength of the hillside.

I haven't made up my mind about including the siding.The idea was to have somewhere to display spare locos, but there is also a very specific scene I want to model, that breaks my rule about not copying another model rather than the prototype. In my defence, it is a recreation of an old MRC cover that inspired the concept of a small layout masquerading as part of a much bigger scene. But I'm not sure I can include both elements.

The rest of the week mostly consisted of a blind panic about a work task that I have to confess I eventually handed over to AI, with mixed results, and ended with a whole day and evening of committee meetings.

In between things, I've made a bit more progress on the hextrak module, and the buildings for the North Sunderland inspired layout.Knowing how I work I'm hoping that in the next few weeks I'll have a period of hyper activity and get a lot of scenic work done on multiple layouts

Blokus

 If you have never come across it, let me recommend Blokus as a family game for all ages. We have introduced lots of people to it, all of whom have bought it for themselves.

There are just two catches:

It really needs just four players. Exactly four.

And

If you're playing with toddlers and the smallest piece gets lost, it becomes impossible to play fairly.

You can guess how we learned the second point.

August turned out to be an odd month. I don't think my reaction to finishing the book was what I expected. Instead of feeling relieved and taking a break or excited to start something new, I just felt terribly deflated and dissatisfied whilst struggling to do an importnat but relatively simple follow on task.  Why that is the case is complicated, but I do feel the black dog yapping at my heels.

But, having introduced the boys to pond yachts earlier in the month, I introduced the twins to model railways.

I had a Hex Track module lying around, and after an incredibly basic attempt at landscaping, using the included plaster bandage and the offcuts from the wood, I handed it to the girls to paint.

I think we all learned valuable lessons.

Not least, how much I adore the twins, and how hard it is to get paint off wallpaper.

The odd thing is that, after they went home, I began to see an emergent landscape. 

I wish I'd had some of this thinking in mind to start with 

So there will be a road, with a narrow-gauge connection, and an abandoned NG "mainline" running alongside the standard-gauge line. I happened to have some suitable track and tippers left over after planning the lime kilns on the N gauge layout.

I want to add some figures and animals to the scene to add scale, but that is proving quite difficult to source quickly. Never mind trying to find N gauge unicorns...

The black bit in front of the track will be a small drainage ditch, which is something inconsequential but important that I've been wanting to model for a long time.

Returning to Blokus, I think I've identified what the missing smallest pieces are in terms of my layouts.

- A simple corrugated iron shelter in N gauge is still something I'm struggling to make after many attempts. I don't have an N gauge equivelant of the clear Wills sheet that made Apa work. Every option has a compromise that looks dreadful to me, and then I need to maintain the CI over much bigger models.

-Stonework and bridge abutments.  A bit of me knows how I could model these in 2mm, but a voice keeps telling me I can't.

- Relative size. I really struggle with this, How can a tree that looks too small in 4mm look stupidly overscale in 4mm?



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A Change of Tack

Peace doesn't last long around here.

We've had a house full this week, with mum, who was 94 this week, middle daughter and three grandsons. Today is handover day with the grandchildren, with the twins coming to stay for the weekend .

Sadly, for the boys, it has rained a lot, but whilst I was working, everyone else had a trip to Longton Park.

And how do you keep young boys entertained in a Victorian park?

With a traditional model boat from Ocean Craftworks.

In the absence of wind, the kite line had to do a lot of the work.

The fleet has since been expanded with a more modern vessel.

They are both very simple. I suspect I won't be able to resist refining them both to improve their performance and to allow for some tuning of the rig. But I'm also hoping to grow the fleet as the grandchildren become more able seamen.

Peace at Last

 A few parcels have arrived in recent days.

Probably most exciting was the one containing the recent Kato OO9 point. I really like the integrated design.

This is intended for a very simple scenic test track, so I can live with the appearance of the odd rail section. 

Yes, I know it is the old edition, I couldn't be bothered to fetch the new one from downstairs

Another delivery was a Rapido Sirdar, though I've not got around to unboxing that yet.

Finally, there were the fittings for the manual point motors I'm using on the OO project. These were originally meant for TAoC, but if I ever return to that layout, I think I'll use servos instead.

At least now the new book and training course have been released, to positive reviews and numbers, so I can put away my recent bedside reading.

Of course, all these books now need updating to take my book into account...

In theory I now have some spare time back. Except on Friday I had one of those chain of events disasters that ended up bricking my personal laptop, which wasn't the one that got a cup of coffee split over it before being knocked to the floor - that one survived unscathed.

So I've spent most of the last five days configuring an el cheapo Mini PC as a short-term measure. Fortunately, I have an overabundance of monitors - at one point when writing the book I had five screens on the go. Less fortunately, I've had to dive back into the arcane world of network settings and hardware devices.

I find myself looking at the Mini PC and thinking about how it could be used on a layout to control a range of things.

Mum is also back with us after a few weeks at my brother's. Whilst her physical health has improved slightly her mental health is visibly declining. She now constantly verbalises her inner monologue and can't be left alone. So peace is a relative thing.

The Loneliness of the Long Distance Author

OK, so I underestimated the workload of producing the final draft of the AI book whilst working across time zones stretching from India to the USA.

And a special call-out to my wonderful - and I mean that- editor, who seems to work on all her days off and at weekends. The book, or, in modern management parlance, the Bok, is inching closer to publication before the last day of the month.

But I did get some things done.

The biggest thing is I managed to find a window to do some paint spraying.

The Gubbin Box Caldon Low tramway loco in 120th scale and the Double M N gauge Peckett are now in undercoat. They are posed here on the 3D-printed chassis that came with the Caldon loco, but I have spare Tsugawa chassis ready to fit to both of them. Both are also posed on my Kato Circus modules. I really must order Kato wheels for the Caldon tramway wagons. The next step is to experiment with some of the new paint pens.

Being able to zoom in so much with a phone camera really helps identify the flaws that need fixing before the next stage, including on that pagoda shelter, which was a dirt-cheap purchase.

I would love to find a better chassis for the Peckett, if anyone has an idea for one?

As an aside, the 1/350 frigate model is progressing, though the catch is the total cost of possible enhancements relative to the cost of the base model. On top of which, some of the enhancements are only available in bulk, which means I have to build more models to justify buying them...

As for what to do with that Caldon LowTramway loco - I've stripped my old OO9 micro layout of all the 4mm elements as a starting point.

The Art of the Model

My eldest daughter and her partner came to stay this weekend. It provided an excuse for a family trip to Manchester.  I've always loved Manchester, but unbelievably it was the first time Issy had visited, despite it being on our doorstep.

Needless to say, despite the disruption on the tram network, Issy fell under its spell in the same way I have. I loved introducing the family to a place I know so well, not so much as a guide, but as someone encouraging them to see the city through their own eyes. Although perhaps that is what a true guide is.

Han the Daughter. Henceforth, HtD fell in love with the art gallery the way I first did 40 years ago. Meanwhile, Issy and Richard escaped to the excellent café. I highly recommend the toasted sandwiches, as long as you haven't eaten anything else all day.

There is something special about a gallery you've known for years. My education owes as much to endless weekends in Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery as it does to school, and the early years of my so-called career often involved the Tate. 

You see the works in a different way, you build a narrative around them, you learn how they were made, and you learn to think.

HtD, Richard and I spent ages in front of a painting by Valette, Lowry's art teacher, that spoke to me of the Manchester I knew around 1969. The great thing about this gallery is you can get right up close to the works, and the closer you look at some of the works, the more they make sense. This isn't the place for a lecture on how Valette's impressionism led to something in Lowry's art that is so much more than the cliched image of matchstick people.

Look at this detail of a scene of civil dignitaries laying a foundation stone. Every figure has a personality.

Lowry and Valette are instantly likeable artists, but you can learn from those artists and paintings that aren't immediately accessible.

This is a detail from a Dutch landscape.

I stowed it away in my mind because of something I read about Constable recently. There is a real skill in portraying  a distant landscape in a way that has more depth than the simple fore, middle and background that I was taught.

It was brought home to me the next day, when we were walking on the Chatsworth Estate.

Back in Manchester, we wandered through what is now known as the Northern Quarter.

And there you will find one of my favourite bookshops, the HQ of The Modernist

The Modernist extolls the virtues of Brutalism, but not at the expense of all else. I really recommend a subscription to any of you who love postwar design.

I picked up two important books with relevance to modellers. The first was Small Shops. An incredible study of the sort of shop that has now disappeared from the High Street.

The other was a reprint of Nairn's Towns

There is an argument, and Nairn would have loved an argument, that he is the architectural historian who saved what is left of British town centres. Much more so than Betjeman.  But he was also brutally honest.

If you model British railways between 1960 and 1980ish you need to read his books to understand the reality. I see so many layouts that sanitise post-war urban life. It was dirty, murky, like a painting by Valette, populated by pinched-faced people from a painting by Lowry.