Another Artistic Diversion

After Covent Garden we whizzed down to north Greenwich and the Emirates Skyline. Those who know me will probably be aware that whilst fortunately I'm a fearless frequent flyer the same can't be said when it comes to heights in general. So you can imagine how chuffed I was to get to the other side only to discover that the DLR wasn't running and we had to go back over the Thames again and take the Jubilee Line.

The knock on effect of this was that I missed visiting the Edwin Smith exhibition that is currently on at RIBA

I made up for this by buying myself the catalogue and a second hand copy of  Olive Cook's English Cottages and Farmhouses for which he provided the photographs.

I have to admit that I'd always thought of him as a photographer of the urban landscape and it has come as a bit of a revelation to see his more rural work. Although the book on cottages was published in 1982 the photos date from 1950 to 1971. Both publications are highly recommended.

1:1 Scale Model Building

With my office being in London I try and avoid the place on my days off but for once I gave into the badgering because Issy wanted to see the poppies in the moat of the tower of London.

I suppose they are an example of 1:1 scale modelling, and interesting that they are a pastiche of real poppies. Actually thinking about it they are probably what typical good model poppies would look like if they were scaled back up to full size.

I did insist we made a quick detour though to Covent Garden. Leaving aside the well stocked bookshop upstairs in the shop at the LT Museum there is also this added attraction in the piazza:

Rather impressive isn't it?

You can read more about it here but if you haven't worked out how it was done yet I'll just offer the clue that you don't normally see kiosks in Covent Garden that are shut on a Saturday.

In other model news I got home to find a little package waiting for me from Lcut Creative......

But for now I'll leave you with those poppies.

Ready to Print

So I'm sure I've said this before but the Templot track plan for my The Art of Compromise based layout is just about ready to go.

I have to say it looks much less elegant as a plan on the page than it does when printed out full size and laid on the baseboards

There are a few things I'm less than happy about, especially when it come to sleeper spacing and the catch points , but I'm sure I can sort some of those out during the build. Somewhere I've lost a subtle curve in the foreground loop as well.

Other aspects have worked better than I expected though, especially the division of points avoiding baseboard joins and structural members.

This first iteration is going to conform very much to Roy's original conception of the design, with strong echoes of the Fairford Branch.You might want to keep an eye on the Lcut website because we've been collaborating on a few ideas. However I'm building it with one eye on eventual conversion to a pastiche of the TVR which, given the small size of the buildings, should add considerably to the deceptive spaciousness of this bijou model. I might add an extra board as well to model the engine shed and quarry spur from Llangynog.

Not the Scaleforum News

This was going to be a photo-report on my first trip to Scaleforum.

Unfortunately cumulative flight delays to and from Amsterdam meant that by Saturday there was no way I could face another day of travelling. I was beginning to feel a bit brighter on Sunday, but so was the weather which persuaded me both to clean out the garden shed and to re-visit the saga of the baseboard legs.

Fairly quickly it became apparent that what I thought was a design fault I'd built into both pairs of legs was actually a constructional fault that only affected the one pair and which was quickly rectified with a hammer and a screwdriver.

That still leaves me with the problem of adding stability to a high and narrow baseboard that needs to be assembled around existing furniture in my home office, and which can standalone without the baseboard in place. I suspect I might be on a fools errand, though I have a couple of ideas to try out still.

I also found the time to assemble the Tim Horn laser cut baseboard kit I bought with the tramway layout in mind. Not that it needed much time, it just fell together with minimal effort on my part.

Now the baseboards I've already built for the Art of Compromise are OK, but I'm beginning to think Tim's might be a better bet for long term use, if only because they are deeper and the alignment between boards is so well thought out. My tramway plan might also need a bigger board if I adopt the plan so that the trams never need to reverse, avoiding the trolley pole and the driver position being out of synch.

The reason I built my own boards in the first place is because my slight variation on the design meant the turnout to the coal staithes siding would be right over a baseboard join if I used 3ft long boards.

But having rethought the design I think it works best as Roy first drew the plan, which means that 3ft boards aren't an issue. The trouble is that means returning to the arcane universe of Templot to make the revisions,

The photos feature one of my Airfix 14XXs. The good news is that the Ultrascale EM gauge wheelsets for it arrived last week. 

The bad news is today an email arrived from Mainly Trains to say they no longer stock the 14XX detailing pack, or the chassis to fit the GEM Cambrian 2-4-0T. 

Both bits of news are a very serious blow to my plans.

An Afternoon in Cloud Cuckoo Land

Along with some quite serious discussions going on amongst the modelling blogs I follow I'm also having to get rather serious about work at the moment. In a good way, I should stress, because it is largely the result of some major successes, but serious all the same. So Friday, for instance, saw me heading off early in the morning for a trip by train that took in Manchester, Leeds, Middlesbrough, York and Birmingham,

I was really ready for some relaxation today, but work managed to intrude into the weekend as well. I did, however, find the time finally to visit the Emett exhibition at Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery. Since the show closes tomorrow I really did leave it pretty late to go, but it was well worth it.

Other than in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang the last time I'd seen many of Emett's creations was at the old Birmingham Ideal Home Show at the long gone Bingley Hall. It was great to see how happy they were making people with adults and children all enjoying the unadulterated fun of it all.

For some reason known only to myself not only did I forget to take my proper camera, but I also forgot to clean the lens of the one I did take. This was unfortunate because somehow I'd deposited massive great fingerprint on it. Oh well.

"For The Dsypraxic Modeller"

There have been some interesting debates going on in the railway modelling blogsphere, or at least that part of it which I frequent, It is clear that many of us worry about the standard of modelling that gets promoted in the mainstream magazines, but also that we have different perspectives on what we should be trying to achieve. The one common factor, perhaps surprisingly, seems to be that many of us see the railway as ancillary to the big picture.

What seems to be underlying the debate is a desire to aim for the best possible visual outcome, and that to achieve that  outcome we need to challenge a lot of conventions, up to and including the premise that Pendon can do no wrong.

Which is great, and I 100% agree with it , except for the small but significant point that I'm dyspraxic.

What does that mean in practical terms? Well basically that I'm not practical. Simple things like cutting a straight line between two clearly marked points are incredibly difficult for me.

Building a point? You have no idea how many times I have to read the instructions, and how I struggle to combine different sets of guidance to achieve the same end.

Typing this blog? You might have noticed the number of typos, because quite literally my right hand doesn't know what my left hand is doing.

So is this an excuse for mediocre modelling?

No.

Absolutely not.

Almost the opposite.

If you knew how much I struggled to carry out the most basic modelling activity you would understand how I feel about people who are lazy modellers.

I feel guilty that I've skirted around this issue until now so I'm going to be explicit about it going forward.

Kings Lynn

Over on Odd's Oracle Martin recently posted a rather fetching picture of an 04 at Great Yarmouth that just cries out to be modelled You can see a rather larger version of the picture here, along with a similar sort of scene from Dowlais that I suspect some of you will find hard to resist.

I think the Great Yarmouth scene has great potential for a boxed diorama as it stands. However it also put me in mind of two other layout plans I've seen.

One is based on Great Yarmouth itself and appears in the Model Railway Planning and Design Handbook. The other is a design by my fellow Apa Box modeller Ian Holmes and is based on a real location in Kings Lynn, though one that was never served by rail.

It is, of course, a complete and utter coincidence that I persuaded my beloved yesterday that there was nothing she wanted to do more than to visit Kings Lynn for lunch.

So here are some pictures of the location Ian had in mind.

And finally a gratuitous weathered warehouse door that was a little further along the quays