Here is a repost of an interesting blog I came across by mancunian1001
A guide to British Railways’ first railway carriage design for the absolute beginner If you go to your nearest preserved railway line, there’s a good chance your train would be hauled by 1950s carriages. They will certainly be slam door carriages with doors at either end of the carriage, with another set half way through. […]
A Beginners’ Guide to British Railways Mark 1 Coaching Stock
Trying to plan a layout (while not planning out a layout) is an entertaining business, but it makes sense in my head, at least. As soon as I start drawing out plans of my garden railway, then I start hyper-focussing on meeting those plans/expectations rather than just adapting pragmatically as I go.
Brewery Pit was built in a similar manner, but I remember thinking through how to conceal off-scene areas and stuff was quite challenging. I think, to date only, one rather shite plan view of my garden railway ‘Grass Heart Vale’ exists, which is overlayed from a photo I took from my drone.
My original plan in my head was to have a fairly modest garden railway which ran through or in front of the shed and formed an oval around the south half of my garden (mostly avoiding the lawn) and would then run along the side of my house and into my garage for safe storage.
After messing around with the lengths of track I ordered, I decided that I would stick to OO Gauge Code 100 track, as I thought the garden wasn’t really the time to mess about with finescale fidelity. The thicker rail heads and sturdier sleeper joints of Code 100 track will be needed to cope with the new climate change-infused variability we will be getting as the years tick by.
As mentioned previously, I also wanted to dabble in some larger scales so I was considering adding some O gauge track, or maybe some 16mm gauge (SM32) track. My original plan for this was to have half of the larger scale loop as O gauge track and switching to 16mm track for the other half, but I wasn’t really prepared for how different the size and scale of the rail heads are (despite being the same gauge). SM32 track has bigger rail making it fairly impossible to link up without some special fishplates and raising up the O gauge track. I asked on some garden railway groups about the running qualities of O gauge locos and 16mm locos on these different types of track and it seems it all comes down to the flanges! O gauge will run just fine on 16mm/SM32 track, but 16mm stock will likely run aground on O gauge track as the flanges are much deeper.
So that was the O gauge track out of the window! I then pondered on how bothered I was about running standard gauge locomotives on what is made to look like narrow gauge track. Others who do this don’t seem to care and I guess, scale accuracy is somewhat of a secondary concern, as I’m in the garden. You will see massive wheelbarrows and brooms and fences in the background. The fun will be in the running. So that matter is settled. I also dabbled with the thought of running a OO track inside the SM32 track. I guess that is still an option, but I might keep that in my mind until the track loops are complete.
So I was now armed with the number of tracks I wanted (x2 OO gauge lines and x1 16mm line) and had an idea of what type of surface area would be required for that, so I could now take some construction material and measurement notes from the New Junction video and have a crack at making a ‘proof of concept’ section.
I opted for making a straight section against the southern fence, as this is the longest straight and a section I will most certainly need irrespective of how my thoughts on the general layout work out later.
The materials needed were:
It was a fairly simple bit of woodwork, really. I used the full 2.4m length of the side frames (as it saved me from having to make too many woodcuts and kept everything accurate). I then cut the bracing supports to the width I wanted to account for my three lines of track. When combined these pieces essentially act as the support frame and then it is topped with a thick surface panel on which the track will be laid. Because of this, the top surface of the ladder frame must be as straight and square as possible so the top board sits on it properly. To sort this out I fixed the inner frame together with its side and braces upside down, while it was lying on a flat piece of board.
Next, I needed to decide on what height the railway would be from the ground and then cut the support posts accordingly. I must admit, that I didn’t give a massive amount of thought to this, other than having the ability to step over it. One challenge with my garden is that is far from flat!! My garden is pretty funny actually at how graded it is in different places. I was worried about having to work out complicated grading calculations. Still, I think I roughly worked out that if this section was fairly equal to the top of the brick wall, then it ‘should’ be near ground level when I eventually built it closer to the house. So I just went with that for now, as surely the builders of the wall that sits beneath my fence knew what they were doing better than me.
So I cut the fence posts and drove them into the meta post spikes with a mallet, the first of which dived into the soil and clay fairly easily and the second smacked into the root of an old conifer tree. I had a crack at trying to get it out, but it wouldn’t come back, so I just concluded to leave it as is with part of the spike above the surface and I reduced the post accordingly. A bit annoying from a symmetry point of view, but I’ll live.
Then I fixed the ladder-like support frame to the posts and used a spirit level to make sure it was as flat as I could get it and drove some quite long woodscrews through the bracers into the post. This often meant that I had to fix the frame bracings at half the width of a fence post to the end of a frame so I could easily fix two sections together around a fence post (if that makes sense). As time went by, this often became a job of making sure bracings were planned for fitting where fence posts were going in, which I think I have done in advance and also after posts have been driven into the ground (so take your pick!)
At this point, I mostly admired my work and also went through a fun ritual of bringing out my BR maroon warship to do some visual checks and to see how it would look in photos and videos and the like, which was also its job when I built my Quarry Transfer diorama many years ago, which I wrote up for BRM magazine.
So that was day one!
So far so good
Grasslands Out
All is not well in toy train world at the start of 2024, or at least that is what you would think from various bits of media coverage and announcements coming out of the UK this January. In a trifecta of unfortunately timed announcements we’ve seen:
This has all occurred across the space of one week in January, so understandably, for a hobby that can get people quite riled up about a particular shade of British Railway green in 1:76th scale, it seems everyone is talking about it (and so am I, so it seems).
One frustration I have with the world we live in at the moment is the lack of nuance in debate and discussion. A situation that often leads people to quickly move towards identifying who is to blame for a given situation. All of the above announcements have a fair amount of individual nuance, but nonetheless, taken collectively, some model train fans and social media watchers have taken to their preferred platforms to announce ‘This is the end of model railways!’
In my limited social media observations, I’ve seen some quite amusing and loaded outbursts. One bizarre one blamed those that purchase Heljan locos at discounted prices for Hattons closing down (I’m not sure how that works, particularly if you bought them from Hattons). Another blames a recently announced multidisciplinary model show and a particular model exhibit currently on the exhibition circuit for closing down Warley. Young people, Brexit, VR headsets, greedy manufacturers, and China are all apparently the cause of this bad news according to the unfiltered views of those frantic typers in internet land.
All of this seems to have culminated in a cheery headline in the Telegraph with an article that puts the blame at the door of young people, which in fact is a paraphrasing of a nuanced comment from Steve Flint of Railway Modeller regarding the Warley announcement, which is now being blown out of proportion to questions of ‘where are all the young people in the hobby, why aren’t they running model shows etc.?’ It’s about at this point I happily step out of social media world until everyone has calmed down.
Speaking of Railway Modeller, the UK has four rather significant groups of model railway journalists associated with three separate model railway magazines, which are best placed to foresee that all of this happening across one week in January 24′ was probably a bad look for the model railway hobby (even for themselves based on advertising revenue and other knock on effects). Maybe they did flag this to those involved in the timing of these announcements, but some PR prepping probably would have gone a long way in this regard.
As a guy in his early 40s, currently quite skint after buying a rather exciting amount of model railway stuff over Christmas (with two model trains running right now in different parts of the house) it feels a bit over the top to be announcing the death of the hobby just yet. It is getting expensive, but so is everything else.
I’ll attempt to provide some nuance on these topics below, call it an opinion piece if you will (but please don’t).
Hattons
Back in the day, I remember travelling to Liverpool with me Dad in, probably, his Granada, sat on boxes of cassette tapes as he went to get labels and inserts fitted to the latest releases from his music studio via his supply network in Liverpool. I was mostly excited about going under the Mersey Estuary via the tunnel (for some reason) and our visit to the model shop to see which parts of our slowly building BR Blue parcel train we were going to acquire when we popped into Hattons before the trip home. Hattons had a longish-looking rickety shop in Liverpool city centre packed full of trains. I don’t remember it very well from these days, but I remember lots of wooden display cabinets and a lot of second-hand stuff under the counter. If I recall correctly, we did, indeed collect a pretty impressive parcel train as those trips went on.
In the 2000s Hattons moved into online retail and they were pretty much THE shop to get model trains from off the internet. They seemed to stock endless amounts of all the latest releases. It was virtually a given back then that if you were buying online it was a ‘Hattons’ job. Usually with some pretty hefty discounts off of the RRP price making it more attractive. The majority of my fleet of BR diesels came from Hattons, with very few, perhaps none, ever needing returning due to faults.
At some point in the 2010s some of the larger model shops had a stab at making model trains themselves. In Hattons’ case they did a few of the earliest of these retail-led offerings in conjunction with Heljan with the Class 14, Class 28 and LMS Garratt. Each of those models had some issue or another, the LMS Garratt’s being the most significant and likely caused various headaches of returns and the like for the shop. Hattons didn’t stop there, though, they went for a classy production of a modern Class 66, which put them in direct competition with one of their suppliers in Bachmann. This ultimately led to Hattons and Bachmann no longer working together to sell models. As a customer, this meant that all of the latest Bachmann releases were no longer available in the online store, and thus initiated some confusion as to what they were actually going to have available in stock in the future.
Around this time Hattons also departed their crumbling but quite quaint model shop in Liverpool centre and moved to a warehouse on an industrial estate on the further outskirts of the City Centre, understandably so, as this was no doubt a much better option for managing their now massive online, model train amazon-like business. However, it didn’t quite have the same charm as a shop visitor. There was actually much less stock to see and ogle at in the new location, which was a shame.
Hattons continued to explore making their own stuff and were planning a set of quaint pre-grouping coaching stock, but were unfortunately beaten to market by Hornby who had secretly been working up a similar set of releases, thus Hattons ended up selling Hornby’s competing offer in advance of, and eventually alongside their own release.
Something I hadn’t considered until recently was Hattons’ early move into the O gauge RTR market with some really big ambitious LNER tender locos at the £700 mark and coaching stock too, but build quality was apparently poor and the range was not that well regarded, leaving others to pick up the O gauge RTR batton leading to a boom in this scale in recent years.
Hattons were also attempting to grow their offer of international sales (which were curtailed by BREXIT and other global factors) and the owner invested in warehousing, staffing and partnerships in the USA around 2022 – as discussed here. These arrangements appear to have been unsuccessful in expanding Hattons’ offer to the USA and is likely a heavy influence on why Hattons has chosen to wind down (although not strictly addressed in their announcements, but in fairness, why should they?).
That’s a fair amount of nuance for one highly impactful model railway shop in Liverpool, right? What a journey and commercial adventure they’ve been on! Choosing to gracefully wind down and bow out doesn’t surprise me. They haven’t gone bust, I just think it is fair to say that they really did invest quite a lot to keep themselves at the forefront of model railway sales, but they likely hoped much of their effort would see better returns on investment than it has. They still don’t offer Bachmann stock, which has seen the shop deprioritised in my own pre-ordering habits. My last visit with my Dad on the way to Model Rail Scotland in 2022 saw us arrive excitedly at the shop on a Friday only to find it closed.
I really don’t see this outcome as a surprise in some ways. Better to quit while you are still ahead as it were. Does this mean we will see other similar shops fail? It seems doubtful as the other equivalent shops have taken different routes. RAILS of Sheffield seems to be doing ‘online early 2000s Hattons’ better than Hattons were and recently resolved their own supplier/manufacturer stand-off with Hornby (few!). Kernow Model Centre seem to have branched out of Cornwall and have integrated into an amenable working relationship with Bachman under their EFE brand which distributes and sells some of their in-shop designed models. Both these larger shops (and others) also have a regular presence at various model railway shows through the year, which I can’t say I recall Hattons having done for a long time (but I might be wrong).
It is none the less sad to see Hattons go and I hope their staff move onto the new opportunities with ease.
Hornby Announcements 2024
Hornby have stuck to their annual January announcement of upcoming releases but also declared they are changing tact and moving towards something more like what Bachmann are doing with seasonal or additional announcements throughout the year. I don’t blame them, as this is a competitive market after all.
They have also attempted to emulate Bachmann’s video announcement, but to mixed success really. The Bachmann ones are quite charming and relaxing efforts with a fair amount of info about prototypes, some footage of real locos and what the Bachmann Club outings have been up to. I really enjoy them, even in the more awkward moments. It is a great coffee break from work.
Hornby seems to have had a go at this format, but it really lacks the depth of knowledge that the Bachmann ones bring. The Hornby video occasionally left you wondering why they just had a voiceover rapidly going through the different numbers of 5 HST coach releases with a slide deck visual. At one point in the video, before the coaching stock announcements, the video narrator says something like ‘coaches are important, without them, locomotives are unlikely to be able to go anywhere’ -what????
The show and tell of the Locomotion model was also a bit painful with most of the quiet chat being from the design lead and how long they’ve been working on the CAD. Some footage from Beamish or even some excitement, would have gone a long way. In fact, occasionally, it felt that even Hornby were cringing through their own announcements.
There was understandably less on offer this year too, after a pretty hefty set of announcements in 2023 including a large range of models in a new scale, so not a shock. I did feel that making a model of their own Margate office for sale is a bit too far into naval gazing territory though. Maybe a nice one-off for staff that work there, but for general sale??? When can we expect models of The Bachmann and Heljan offices? Maybe a vintage Lima office? – in fact, has anyone ever made a model of a model railway factory? Anyway…
Lots of just nonsense stock too (you could also call it shite) including this horrendous and easily laughed at thing (see below). I guess they must sell (one would hope), but perhaps Hornby needs to have a think about the baited audience they have watching their announcements a bit more. I reckon they were not there for the latest Beatles range. You can’t really take in all demographics at once.
Nonetheless, the P2 with extra ears I was after is in there and that Coronation in blue also looks quite nice. I hope they steady themselves through their identify-crisis.
In my view, Hornby in recent years have tried a bit too hard to make the brand of ‘Hornby’ interchangeable with ‘Model Railways’, when it would have probably been better to focus on making great models that grab the attention of different types of modeller and presenting their wears in a modern fashion and being a key and collaborative member of the model railway community. An example is Hornby’s preference for side profile shots of new models (as that is their traditional way of doing things at Hornby), but in regard to last year’s Hush Hush W1, two later releases had significant tooling differences at the front of the model that you can’t see in such images. More context, at least for me, would have led to more sales. Their recent change in management might aid this, but time will tell.
Their recent P2 model really is a beauty and the box and packaging was great too. So I wish them all the best. If they keep this standard up, I’m all in.
Warley
As a Midlands lad, I’ve been to many Warley shows. I remember it in the original show hall that was actually in Warley and it was great then too. I’m pretty sure my Dad has some video camera footage of one of these shows, and I remember buying some of my first OO9 models from a pre-NEC show. For the past 30 odd years Warley has been hosted at Birmingham’s National Exhibition Centre and it has got pretty big and packed out! Manufacturers made big announcements of new models there, showed off prototypes, and they have some of the best model railways on show. Back in the early days, it was one of the first multi-day shows too, but as the years have gone by there is plenty of competition including shows put on by those model railway magazine publishers I mentioned earlier. In fact, pre-COVID, there were just too many large shows really and things seemed to be getting saturated.
Warley has always been pitched as the leading international model railway show, and in some ways is a bit of a model railway trade show. Equivalent shows for other markets, such as E3 for video games, have come to an end post-COVID, with the conclusion that it is easier to manage a lot of this stuff online, without the cost, hassle and PR management needed to bring things to a trade show. And when I mention cost, the NEC and their equivalents have become very expensive to operate any type of event in.
The odd thing about Warley, of course, thus the nuance, is that the show is run by the local Warley Model Railway Club which is a long-established volunteer effort. I’m not sure why they ever decided to take on the task of running the leading model railway show/come-trade show every year, but they did and have done so for 30 years or more. Because they care about the hobby is the likely answer. In my view (and surely in others too) a model railway club’s annual show tends to be a bit of a measure of how good the local Model Railway Club are, and if that is the case, Warley Club must be one of the best!
However, running a show at the scale it now operates (with thousands of people through the doors) is typically the work-arena of a team of properly paid staff in other equivalent sectors and takes the majority of a year to sort out. Again, the model mag guys will know as they likely have a small team that spends part of their full-time jobs organising their own slightly smaller shows.
Steve Flint, as a member of the Warley Club, has said that finding younger members of the Club to help support the show effort is a factor, as much of the show team has been the same since it’s inception, and that is unsurprising in some ways because the Warley Club are running a show that fills a massive exhibition hall, with real steam trains hauled in via flat loaders. This isn’t a volunteer role where you can dabble in and out for over 12 months, you need to be present, pulling your weight and committing time to get the show live on opening day. PR, brochures, traders, negotiating with the venue, exhibitors, logistics… it’s a big job! If younger people are in full-time jobs or starting families, or just gaining life experience, that simply isn’t a role that can be easily done in your spare time. Young people’s interest and presence in the model railway hobby is a pretty secondary factor to the scale of volunteer operation we are talking about here.
The Warley Model Railway Club seem to be doing rather excellently with interesting talks and model-making plans and have likely, as the years have gone by, found the Warley branded show at the NEC to be a bit of a distraction as to what the Club is really for: i.e. just having a bloody nice time talking about model trains, making some nice things, introducing new people to the hobby and having a laugh.
If I was local to Warley, I’d certainly join the Club.
Nonetheless, it is certainly a blow to the hobby, but it doesn’t stop someone else stepping in to fill the void of the UK’s leading model railway trade show. In whatever form it takes it just wouldn’t have ‘Warley’ above the ticket desk. And that is far from me knocking the effort that has gone into this for the past 30 years. It is a tremendous achievement and has certainly pushed the hobby to be as popular as it is today.
I would have loved to have exhibited ‘Brewery Pit’ at Warley one day, but alas. I missed the window. However, as selfish as it may sound, I certainly wouldn’t have wanted to help organise it unless I was being paid.
Here is an older video I made of some of the layouts on display at Warley, which includes the excellent ‘Cliffhanger’ by the late John de Frayssinet.
Summary
Is the hobby in trouble? I really don’t think so. I went to a small show in Frome last weekend (in the gloom of early January) and it was packed with people. I really didn’t expect so many people to be there. Hornby’s woes could be of concern in the longer term, but let’s hope they come back fighting after a rest year.
Are interests changing? Yes, of course, there will be more interest in modern tech in models and probably more of a focus on making the types of scenes younger people remember from their youth. Maybe more carefree stuff, like those much scoffed-at fantasy and sci-fi layouts that came out of that TV show on channel 5 a few years back.
Will other retailers close down? Unlikely in the short term, but it depends on their business models. The ones that survive Hattons, for now, seem pretty solid.
Is it the end of model railway shows? No, but like many events, it is sensible to think about how they are designed, and how they could be different. Railnuts ‘Making Tracks’ is a good example of a more inclusive and interesting idea. Essentially using the pop-up art gallery model in a touring layout set up in interesting places to visit; it in itself being a mammoth modelling effort worth making the effort to travel and see while you can.
Will young people join and support model railway clubs? – if they are inclusive, welcoming and easy to find, then yes. If they are places where you can learn new modelling skills and knowledge about railways that help your own skills and knowledge develop, then a big yes. Will they help run the Club’s show? I’m sure with time they will, but the bar was set quite high at the Warley Club!
When it comes to times of loss and change, it is much better to look back in fondness at the memories you have about those moments, feel the sadness you have to feel, but hold onto that fondness. Sometimes we just can’t fix the changes that occur around us. It certainly isn’t worth looking for who is to blame. Because most times, the answer is: it’s complicated.
Move on Telegraph, nothing to see here.
After an hour or two of further running trials, I decided that I would fill the chain drive transmission box full of weight as that might help with making sure that the loco adheres to the track a bit better across its entire length. You could argue with the weight of the bogies that this isn’t needed, but as it does slip a little while pulling my weighted coal trucks, I thought it might be a good idea.
I took the loco apart for hopefully a final time to see why I was having the stuttering reversing issues, fully prepared to fit some additional pickups, but then it became quite apparent that most of the pickups I’d fitted were not making contact with the tyres, particularly on the trailing bogie (which explains a lot). After a bit of gentle jigging around, re-soldering one pickup that seemed to have gone a bit ‘rogue’ and glueing down a section that had broken free, I gave 36001 its final track test and it ran great in all directions. I designed the pickups a long time ago to collect power across both bogies, so now all is making contact it is unlikely the loco will face many challenges from here on in.
I have ‘approved Leader for operational service’. For now, I plan to keep Leader in my display cabinet, as I’m hesitant to put it back in my foam-protected case after what happened the first time.
I doubt this is the last you will see of Leader on this blog, the next task will be identifying some of the coach stock it hauled during trials, so I can create some accurate trains to run on my garden railway next year.
I hope you have enjoyed this series of articles about making my kit of Leader and I hope someone somewhere finds it all useful.
As this is now complete, I’ll attempt to link all the previous entries below.
Pt7 – https://wordpress.com/post/grasslandsmodels.wordpress.com/1925
Pt 6 – https://wordpress.com/post/grasslandsmodels.wordpress.com/1930
Pt 5 – https://wordpress.com/post/grasslandsmodels.wordpress.com/1646
Pt 4 – https://wordpress.com/post/grasslandsmodels.wordpress.com/1643
Pt 3 – https://wordpress.com/post/grasslandsmodels.wordpress.com/500
Pt 2 – https://wordpress.com/post/grasslandsmodels.wordpress.com/449
Pt 1 – https://wordpress.com/post/grasslandsmodels.wordpress.com/273
For now, Grasslands out
Coaching stock has been on my mind recently (I know, I’m a fun guy).
With the garden railway project likely to be operational after the winter and with my new carpet railway running things quite smoothly it seems I need to start thinking about what my stock of locomotives will be pulling.
I must admit this is a very exciting prospect and one I never thought I’d end up exploring. The reality of working in OO gauge is that, unless you are allotting an entire room of a house or joining a railway club, you are unlikely to run a lengthy train of coaches anywhere near what could be classed as a prototypical mainline length. This is why many of us build branch-line scenes and motive power depots, as we can fit a fair amount into a realistic layout in a smaller footprint with short trains or no rolling stock at all.
Brewery Pit has a relatively fixed length of goods train that can be run, based on how the shunting system works, but mostly based on the lengths of the off-scene fiddle yards.
The garden railway is an entirely different beast. I haven’t made proper measurements, but I think it is an 89ft run with some straights that are over 4m in length. It provides an opportunity to do some proper hauling.
Bar my three fixed consists in the Western Pullman and the two APTs, I have one relatively accurate train I can run, but this is only thanks to the recent arrival of Heljan’s Newton Chamber Car Carriers, which came in a set of three. I’ve added a 1st restaurant car and I have an existing BR mk1 to add. Technically, the restaurant car doesn’t have a kitchen, though, so it’s not entirely correct, but adding this caveat means it is closer than anything else I can achieve right now. I’m also pretty sure that in early BR Blue days the car carriers were more likely seen in a set of three (rather than the earlier days of 6 carriage ones).
Although expensive, I must say that I really like the idea of manufacturers making sets of coaches. It makes things much easier. You end up with multiple coaches that you can be relatively confident ran together, based on the manufacturer’s research rather than mine (in many ways this is a helpful justification of some of the outlay cost), and they come in their own box which makes storage easier. I’m not massively enthused at the idea of having to buy individual coaches with their own boxes while having to create some system to work out what stock I need next to make them a set. So yes, more sets of coaches dear manufacturers, please. The fact the Heljan sets have sold out, despite an incoming cheaper alternative of single carriages might mean I am not alone in this thinking.
Based on the stock that I will likely keep and not sell I think there are a few passenger rakes to gather…
BR Corporate Blue Transition(late 60s/early 70s)
I have a lot of locos that could haul this stock, so it would be sensible to at least have two rakes to run. The Newton Chambers set means I am one down, but this could be extended further. It would also be good to have a set that would have typically run from London to Penzance, which will keep my D600s and Westerns running in the garden.
I could also risk a bit of a mix of maroon stock too, to account for the transition period.
Early BR transition (1948-1953)
The core period of my previous Brewery Pit layout and I have quite a few locos that can run in this period including a quite comprehensive set of early diesel prototypes. I need to do some more research, but it seems I can run ‘crimson and cream’ stock, including BR Mk1s, but also some other stuff too. I also have a few southern region locos from this period including 36001 Leader and the 10200 diesel, so it might be good to get some BR Green southern stock too. Perhaps I start by trying to put together two sets. After asking for assistance on RMweb regarding the various stock that Leader was seen pulling in 1949/50 I actually have a lot of options (including birdcage stock and push-pull sets).
LNER (1920s-1940s)
Although I have sold a few of my stock of these locos recently, I certainly have some that I will retain including the experimental Hush-Hush and my recent arrival in Peppercorn P2 Thane of Fife, both from the 1930s. I’m not sure if these locos will really need more than one set of coaches for now, but I think a rake of teak coaches would be sensible to get hold of. Some caution is needed though as some of the recent Hornby teak coaches look great, while some of the older Hornby teak stock looks pretty crap.
Summing up
So what does that amount to? I think x5 sets of coaching stock, and I have x1 so far. Probably ‘in debt’ is what it amounts to!
I have a comprehensive book on Mk1 and 2 coaching stock, so I can work through these easily enough, but I need to probably get myself a book of pre-BR stock so I can start working out how best to approach this new obsession of mine (and not become bankrupt in the process).
Hattons also makes an interesting set of charts on prototypical formations which can be found here: https://www.hattons.co.uk/newsdetail?id=460
Grasslands Out!
Work continues on my test diorama for my future narrow gauge layout. This diorama will be christened ‘Salmon Crossing’ to put a focus on what will hopefully be an impressive river running across the front of the diorama. Today’s post is not about water though, no, that is a while away just yet. Today we are talking about trees!!!!
What makes a woodland (trees)?
A key feature of this project’s scenery will be woodlands and forest (I’ve purposely separated these because we get dangerously close to my ecology and modelling interests colliding here) and I want these to look as good as I can get them, so it is time to work on some trees. I’ve only briefly dabbled with trees before and for a time had a small copse on Brewery Pit, but I removed it, as the sea foam trees I used didn’t really work; they were overly fragile and too bright and garish in the commercially available form to depict the UK the autumn look I was aiming for. I’m not sure there are any remnants of those trees left anymore. For Salmon Crossing I wanted to try out some techniques I’ve seen in some YouTube tutorials to make both broadleaf trees and conifer trees.
I’m still deciding on the exact make-up of tree species for my next layout set in North Devon in the 1900s-1920s. Beech trees are a pretty key component, of at least modern, North Devon (sorry, getting a bit ecologyeee again), but there isn’t much evidence of beech being used for timber, with oak being the key British tree for such things before the establishment of modern forestry from the World Wars onwards. In fact, even those oak trees that were used as shipbuilding timber were more likely to come from English Oaks in fields and parks, so you can start to see the dilemma of trying to create a fantasy forestry operation akin to those seen in North America.
The redwood trees, which were a key component of the North American timber trade, are a whole different ball game when it comes to timber potential. They are capable of growing up to 330 ft (100 metres) tall in their native range, and the few introduced British examples reach merely 130 ft (40 metres). As a proper comparison: before the advent of the Forestry Commission and the afforestation practices of various natural and non-agriculturally productive areas, timber was viably taken from oak tree trunks as little as 9 inches wide (there are OO gauge locomotives longer than this).
Why this lengthy pondering of timber production and woodland species? Well, just to say this will be complicated to get exactly right. There were conifer-based timber plantations present in the UK from, I think, the 1830s onwards, so perhaps the easiest explanation is to make up one that existed in North Devon around that time. Probably helmed by some extortionately rich and moderately deranged local gentleman who decided a forestry railway akin to those in North America was needed, despite all of the evidence to the contrary (that doesn’t sound that unconvincing, to be honest).
Experiments in miniature forestry
So I’ve experimented with making trees from wire armatures, which was a technique I first came across in the modelling writings of xxxx and later, the excellent Wild Swan Publications volumes by Gorden Gravett. I’ve had the first volume of Gordon’s book for a while and knew what he creates looks great, but the results looked complicated to achieve, it is a learning curve/effort thing, I guess. Then along comes some Luke Towen YouTube videos clearly riffing on the same techniques, but using some slightly modified (and possibly speedier) alternatives.
The first thing I did was ‘spiralled up’ a bunch of paper-lined florist wire (gauge 28) and folded the whole bunch in half and created a loop at the base (Luke explains this better). It was at this point I probably wondered what the hell I was doing. Was I making a pretty Christmas decoration? The technique of separating the bunched wires down into groups of two tips and creating loops is key to the modified technique used by Luke, as these loops are eventually snipped to create tiny little branches and root tips. He also suggests squeezing larger loops and dividing them into two, even tinier, loops. ‘Squeeze it like a jelly bean’ he says in his Australian accent in his video, which I think will be stuck in my head every time I do this; wondering why I have no clue exactly what he means, but KNOWING what he means all the same!
Eventually, after plenty of winding and looping you start to get a rather nice looking tree-shaped armature, with roots and everything, which all looks rather cool and importantly to me looks like a proper deciduous tree. Next, I covered the armature with a layer of latex rubber, which is great as it hides the wire frame quite well, but retains some flexibility to reposition the tree branches and roots. This is a pretty quick exercise, but it is a bugger to clean the latex off a paintbrush after, though. This step is a variation on Gravett’s approach which uses a mix of Artex (Neverending Story comes to mind) and PVA for bark, which I might mess with at some point in the future.
I then added some static grass to the branch tips to simulate even-tinier branches, but I’m not sure about this, to be honest. It looks okay, but I’m yet to add proper leaf foliage.
I had a go at doing a bigger tree similar to an ageing Beech tree by wrapping two lots of wires together with a smaller gauge of wire. This effect works quite well for emphasising those rings around the trunk that broadleaf trees sometimes have, but I can’t say I’m incredibly impressed with this tree, but it will stay on the diorama (it’s a test build after all).
I then primed everything grey and have yet to approach the next step which will be a bit of painting and foliage.
Before we get to that though, I want to try some conifer trees!!!
More to come.
As continuing work on the garden railway through the winter months is challenging, I have moved back into the house and back to my model desk. I am nearing the very final stages of working on my Green Arrow Kit of 36001 Leader, which is really exciting. I am actually conducting running trials and I have got myself a carpet railway!! I ordered some of this Kato HO track that has a plastic ballast frame and easily clips together. I did consider it as a possible option in the garden, but I’m not sure it will work.
Anyway, I now have a full loop of the above, which allows me for the first time to test some of my model’s hauling and long-term running abilities, particularly how they cope with curves. Brewery Pit is very much a back-and-forth trial and also an excellent test of how stock copes with complicated point work, so much of my stuff stock has had those tests, but not curves and with the garden railway likely being operational next summer, I thought it might be sensible to conduct some of these tests in the safety of the house (on my horrid peach carpet to see if any bits fly off and the like).
The ride height of Leader’s frame on its massive chain-driven bogies was always going to be an issue as the body shape risks clashing with the rear of each bogie on sharper turns, the obvious solution being to lift the body further off the bogies, but the gap between the body and bogies soon looks pretty ridiculous. Perhaps lost to time now, but the plates that fix the bogies to the body include ribs that allow the bogies to swing at angles as they turn, but, for some reason, one of my two plates is formed in the wrong aspect and won’t fit unless upside down (thus no ribs). In some ways, this isn’t too much of an issue as this did take the ride height of Leader a bit too high anyway (but I could have filed them down). Past Tom had been quite inventive in a DIY way with making small squares of plasticard to adjust the height and making washers from white metal. 2023 Tom ordered some 0.5mm thick washers and fitted them around the bogie pivot. I also noticed that my pickup system was running foul of the casting of the cab interior, which I have sorted by fitting them deeper into the cab and at a slight angle (you can’t really tell, but needs must).
I also found the fitting of the transmission box (between the two bogies) a bit unnerving as I had previously fitted this with little screws into the resin case. It also didn’t quite sit equidistant between the bogies, so I decided to do a quick upgrade of this and installed it using a small high-powered magnet instead. I did this by fitting the magnet to the end of a brass tube fixed inside the transmission box. This should make it a little easier to make chassis adjustments for maintainence in the future.
After these changes it ran wonderfully, the best I have seen it run actually. It still suffered from the occasional short, which was cancelling out my DCC controller, and for some reason, it does not care for travelling in reverse around a clockwise curve as it stutters and shorts out.
I suspected the reason for the electrical short was my floating middle axle in each bogie. I know many don’t like this arrangement in Heljan locos, but honestly, it was the easiest thing to do (it is quite a long wheelbase to not allow that type of movement). I imagine it is probably the rim of the axles touching the white metal bogie inner frame on corners causing the sparks and pops. Again, DIY Tom of the past had attempted a fix by putting some black insulation tape on the frame of one of the bogies. 2023 DIY Tom decided to mask off the inner face of the tyres using some dark brown masking film and used a scalpel to cut away the excess.
And Horrah!!! No more shorting!! Not a spark and not a single decoder or DCC controller wobble, so I think we class that as sorted. I do still have the stuttery reverse clockwise issue to face, but I note it is now slightly different and one of the twin motors does often attempt to run. Weird how it will do the same manoeuvre in reverse on an anti-clockwise curve just fine, hmmm… having wiggled the bogies I’m pretty sure it is just to do with pick-up contact on the tightest section of curves.
When I finish my coffee I’ll have a look, but this is really final tweaking business and I am very happy to finally see Leader running so well. It does make me wonder about the £300-odd I have paid for this RTR model, to be honest. Hopefully, they will show some pictures of the lined grey version soon (as I couldn’t really be bothered to do that lining*).
* -he says in full knowledge that he spent 6+ hours adding rivets to the the thing using the same technique as lining.
Grasslands out
For a while, I’ve been eyeing up Kato Unitrack as I thought it could be a useful temporary system of trackwork to lay out and test trains with. The Kato design is more often seen in N-scale layouts (particularly Japanese layouts) and is a set track system that clips together and has a pre-moulded plastic ballast base. I think the raised plastic ballast base is great as it lifts the track about 1cm off the surface of the floor and keeps it out of the way of dust and general carpet detritus. Only fairly recently have I started to find sections of this track in HO/OO from a supplier that operates in the UK, so I thought I’d give it a go and orderered some long straight sections to test.
Also on my mind was whether it was durable enough to operate in the garden (ideal in some ways as I could easily pack it up for winter), but the more I think about it, the less sure I am. I’m not sure how well the plastic base will tolerate direct sunlight over summer. Now winter is back again, I thought it might be sensible to buy some more of this track to create a loop that I could do some tests of my locomotives and rolling stock on.
So now I have a 4ft loop to test my trains on and for the past few days I have been putting some of the stock of locos I’ve collected since 2004 through their paces. All have been test run on a rolling road before, but I’ve never had the opportunity to pull wagons and coaches around curves and perform ‘under load’ tests, unless on the odd occasion on my Dad’s loft layout.
I’ve been using the coaching stock and wagons I have to hand to perform some of these haulage tests and it is a surprisingly time-consuming exercise and I suspect it will probably take me most of winter to complete. In the past 5 days I’ve tested x16 locomotives and made minor tweaks including gluing loose buffer beams and steps back on and faced a few more interesting challenges. One of my fleet of D600 warships (my fave one) was running well, but did need a surprising amount of power to keep it going and after a while the speed fell sharply and it stalled. Having asked for some support from the manufacturer it sounds like an under rated capacitor might be the cause, so I’ll look at that and probably do a fix on the other D600 one from the same batch.
I also came across some frustration with Tom of the past who was adamant that he would never use NEM coupled stock in the future, so decided to cut away the NEM sockets that limited bogie movement on DP2, which is understandable in some ways but quite annoying now. It looks like there might be a quick win here in just finding spares for the NEM sockets I removed.
So that is 2 (maybe 3) locos out of 16 that have some fixes required, which is not bad odds really. and i think I might address those issues rather than slog on as I might create a bit of a depressing backlog of maintenance work if I’m not careful.
I think the locomotives that seem to have endless haulage capacity under test are Accurascale’s recent Deltic model (that thing is an utter beast, and possibly the weightiest loco I own) and a left-field surprise in Heljan’s Class 28 Metrovick, which didn’t seem to show any signs of slowing down when hauling a load of coaches.
This test is also a bit of a continuation of an exercise I started a few years ago of checking and documenting the running capabilities of my fleet, but the main difference now is that I am approving them for service on the garden railway of the future.
Grasslands Out
At the start of this year, I set myself some pretty big modelling ambitions. I set myself the task of building some test dioramas for my next layout (an OO9 layout set in the early 1900s), and my pretty ridiculous plan to build a garden railway.
I’m happy to report that all these projects have progressed and this is the first chronicle of my time designing and making a garden railway, which is now christened ‘Grass Heart Vale Railway’ (GHVR), I can imagine a ‘Grass Heart Vale Express’ headboard already.
Let’s start with why I decided to do this, which perhaps I’ve covered before, but in short:
I have some really nice OO gauge stock and I now have some rather lengthy set consists including: x2 APTs and the western-modified Midland Pullman. All of these I love, but none of my future plans for a model railway build could realistically accommodate for running these. They are too long and I’d need to commit too much house real estate to the effort. So my options were simple; I either don’t buy them (or sell the ones I have); or I commit to designing something that can accommodate them to run. And so, I took the latter route and turned to my garden…
I’ve never really thought a garden railway was that viable of an option in OO gauge, as I thought it risked damage to the locos a bit too much. My youth growing up with visits to Don Jones’ ‘Miniature New Street’ in Sutton Coldfield, West Midlands are very fond memories of mine, though. I used to love looking at the big coal power station miniature (not something easily made indoors) and watching the ‘peaks’ running around the various patios and along the ponds in Don’s surprisingly large back garden. A lot of the stock did look damaged and tired in my later teens, though, which I guess is the risk of running at ground level and in foot swinging distance. Don’s railway also did see a lot of running and visitors of all ages, which no doubt added to some of its rougher edges. So generally, ground-level garden railwaying, was not part of my plan.
I then came across an alternative build method in the ‘trestle’ format of a garden model railway where the entire affair is raised off the ground, around what looks like a ladder frame, and looks a bit like a raised race track. Now, this wasn’t far off some of the other options I’d considered for a loop run indoors, which included a fairly minimal scenery loop idea for my garage.
I then started considering a nice loop running through my shed that crossed half the garden as a good start, maybe crossing a pond with a nice railway bridge, possibly terminating in the security of my garage.
This YouTube video by New Junction where Richard spent his covid lockdown making an O gauge garden railway (with the gusto many of us manifested in those strange covid times), was a massive inspiration to this project, as I thought that the design method seemed sound and the build didn’t seem that challenging to tackle. I thought perhaps with a bit less COVID gusto, I could build on/improve a bit on the design concept too.
There were a few basic principles that have come out of these initial thoughts:
So perhaps those are the fundamentals that were on my mind.
Although my thoughts initially focussed on perhaps a double line of OO gauge track, I then started wondering about adding a line of a gauge I’ve never worked in before (perhaps as a taster for something in the future), so I thought maybe a loop of O gauge would also provide some fun opportunities too.
I ordered a few sections of different PECO track types to see how they would look and might work outside. These included:
O Gauge Code 124
OO Gauge Code 75 wooden-sleeper bullhead
OO Gauge Code 75 Finescale
OO Gauge Code 100
SM32 Gauge Code 200
I also ordered some decking samples as I wondered if I could work out a suitable width of recycled plastic decking to use as the main running surface, but I decided against this in the end as I thought creating curves with it would be a headache and I wasn’t sure what would happen to it under heat exposure for long hot summers.
Keeping to principle 1, I didn’t want to spend too much time designing and planning out the garden railway (lining up some track on a bit of decking was enough for me), so I thought the sensible first step was to build a section as a ‘proof of concept’ to see how the build would work and get an idea of how much this will cost and how long it will take.
I’ll cover all of this next time, but for now, I’ll drop somewhat of a spoiler of how far I’ve got with the build by the end of Autumn 2023 and I intend to post some insights into how things progressed in future posts.
I hope you enjoy learning about the Grass Heart Vale Railway.
The update of my Bulleid Leader kit is nearly complete now. It pains me somewhat to think how long this project has been on my workbench. All of the shots of my original attempt are staged on Brewery Pit back in its first iteration with a retaining wall, probably from around 2009.
Here is a brief recap, but you can read about what has taken so long in my previous blogs. Basically, the cellulose acrylic paint I previously used never really set properly and it started to react badly to being placed in a foam protective box, and then I wrapped it in one of those soft plastic sheets (that models come in these days) and the paint stuck to that too.
So the need for an overhaul was needed and it was stripped back and I started again (as I say, see previous posts).
I decided to add some rivet transfers this time, which are little embossed rivets on transfer paper. It took a fair amount of patience to apply over the existing panel lines I had tried to scribe onto the model based on its actual panel layout. I used, I think Archer’s transfers, and I cut them into the strip lengths required and tried to fit them. The rivet strips had a tendency to rip on the transfer paper, particularly for longer lengths which was quite annoying. I think I started by submerging the transfers in water first, but soon started laying the strip of transfer paper, on its backing paper beside where it was to be placed so I could gently move the transfer a minimal distance onto the model’s surface (after applying some water). If I recall correctly I also had to work on distinct sections each time, to allow the previous line of rivets sufficient time to dry and adhere. Not the most fun job in the world, but it does give the model a rather nice finished effect.
Once all the rivets were laid over my former panel lines, I then took Leader to my airbrush booth and applied a new primer coating and attempted some shading on the panel lines before applying a new ‘white aluminium’ coating. I then added some burnishing to the casing where I assume it would have occurred if the prototype was indeed run in service with an aluminium-like finish. This is a fantasy at this point really, as my model depicts the only known colour photo of Leader, when it was literally being painted for a photoshoot at the time.
In real life, it was finished in all-over photographic grey with one large BR symbol on one side for a works photoshoot. Not long after that the BR insignia was removed and panel lining was added to the grey and it went out on its trials in this state. Photographic records seem to show it never got cleaned or at least repainted again, as you can clearly see the ‘shiny’ panel where the BR insignia was once applied.
There is a RTR model of Leader coming out soon from KR Models and they seem to have made the odd decision to go with one livery option that is very similar to my model but with the BR insignia. Pretty basic research would show this to be inaccurate to be honest, as the loco was clearly matt or satin grey based on B&W photos, but perhaps they have been looking at the photos of my model too long and got confused.
Anyway, back to my Green Arrow kit build: I finished off the bodywork with some coats of satin varnish to protect the bodywork and hope I don’t have some of the previous troubles I’ve had with it. There is no tackiness this time and I also left it for a long time to cure to prevent such issues.
I then refitted all of the glazing and door handles and remade a few in the process and I think it is really looking great now. It’s been almost a year since I did the bodywork and I’d actually forgotten I’d done the undershading to the panels, but it really shows up well in photos, like some slight darkening near the panel lines, so I’m really happy about that. I am tempted to finish it with a wash of black, but I’m fighting that urge as it looks pretty good as is.
Now onto the final aspects, which involve its running abilities. I fitted two Lenz decoders to the bogies (each bogie is powered) and the last time I tried to run it (at the 2018 Peterborough Model Railway Show) it kind of just stuck its finger up at me and refused to go across most of Brewery Pit’s track work, so it ended up being a static display with Santa, his reindeer at the head of the Coca Cola Train.
I saw a few connections had dislodged from my pickup arrangement and some of the pickups were in odd places so I sorted all that out and gave it a test run and to my surprise, it ran incredibly well. Hoorah!!
It doesn’t run so well with the body on, though, but granted still better than my 2018 effort. I must admit the chassis support mounts are a bit odd, and I suspect I mounted them differently to prevent the ride height from being REALLY high!
I think I need to adjust the leading bogie height by a few mm just to make sure the pickups clear the cab interior mould as I suspect the pickups are colliding with it and messing up the running a little.
After staring at it for an evening, I suspect that an M5 washer will resolve this issue most simply, but we shall find out later today.
Oh!!! And because I am so close to the endpoint, I even fitted coupling this time around. In a show of how time has moved on in my modelling world, I have fitted two types of coupling: An NEM pocket for normal coupling hidden on the bogies; and a wire bar to allow it to couple up to my ‘sprat and winkle’ equipped stock. The reason for this being that Leader will likely be a regular runner on Brewery Pit (which uses Sprat and Winkle couplings) and on my large garden railway too, where I might want it to haul some stock that isn’t modified.
Now onto the oncoming KR Models version. I have ordered one and mine will hopefully be Leader in its final livery of lined grey. The profile of the KR one seems slightly straighter and the cab windows look to be more correct in overall form. It looks like a slight improvement, but they’ve recently added massive rivets to the prototype model (much like I have done, but I think there’s are bigger). If we really want to get into rivet counting, they should be countersunk and not so prominent, but I don’t know, it has looked a bit odd in pictures, but might be better in real life. I was paying the money for fidelity and accuracy, so I feel a bit mixed about it.
My biggest gripe with the incoming KR Model from photos is how they have modelled it with all vents and doors closed. As Leader was well known as a heat trap of death, it seems pretty unlikely you would have ever seen it running with all the roof vents and doors closed. This was why I modelled mine with all vents opened and doors slightly opened. The under chassis detail looks good and no doubt it will run smoothly, but I have been watching its development thinking ‘does it really look that different to mine?’ Probably not helped by all the prototype photos of the model being in my model’s silver colour scheme too.
I have seen some discussion on the internet about the KR model ride height, but I don’t know, it seems an unfair criticism as the original was clearly tall and pretty ridiculous. My model is the tallest thing I have on any layout and I had to modify all the tunnels on Brewery Pit to allow it to get through. You only have to find that great picture of the water-filling rig created by the engine crew who couldn’t get it to fit under watertowers at stations or other pictures of it running on coaches to see, in comparison what a monster this thing was.
More to come
Grasslands Out!
Grasslands Models 