Saturday Film Club: Classic car scrapage

Nooooo. Those are classic cars being scrapped!

Scrapyard action from the days when anti-rust protection was pretty much non-existant. You could even find tin-worm on a brand new car!

Still, it's good to see people are still blaming the Council for not clearing up mess, and not the person who made it. Also, it seems our model roadsides should be littered with dead automobiles.

York Show 1985 - The Trade

So what could you buy in 1985, and from whom?

The first advert is from Ratio and features their Provender Store (then £5.45 inc. VAT, now £18.95) and Water tower (£2.50 to £9.30) both still with us today. There's a Peco advert too, from the days when these two were separate businesses.

RailMail of Watford offered "Consistently good value" and £240 instant credit to anyone with a credit card or clearing bank cheque card.

Wakefield Model Centre might have been "Your one-stop hobby shop" but sadly stopped trading in 2013.

Precision Paints are still with us, as are Slater's Plastikard and the Monk Bar Model Shop in the city centre.

JidencoModels are "for quality" although anyone who has tackled one of the kits might disagree, there were a few "issues" although skilled modellers could assemble them. George Norton kits are now part of the London Road Models world.

The big news though, is from Wild Swan Publications - An entirely new specialist publication for the more serious modeller" - Model Railway Journal was born!

The full list of those attending the show:

Ratio Models
Wakefield Model Centre
The Transport Scene
DJH Models
Ebor Group secondhand sales
ECM Electronics
Railway Modeller Magazine (Peco Publications)
Jidenco Scale Models
Derek Mundy - Sprat and Winkle Components
Precision Paints Ltd
SLaters (Plastikard) Ltd
Geo Norton & Co.
Railmail of Watford and Glasgow
BTA Hobbies
PhotoRail Porcessing - R, Elliff & Co. Ltd
Rail Riders Club

Garden Rail December 2018

It's funny how themes develop when putting a magazine together. Purely by chance, I found myself with a couple of articles where the writers talk about garden railways for youngsters. One of these is a layout that is possibly the simplest we've ever featured, but has an interesting story to tell - and one that a lot of people (I suspect) will relate to.

We've also got a WW1 theme with a piece on modelling interesting rolling stock as well as a review of Accucrafts Hunslet.

And of course, it's Christmas and I've always wanted to do a gift guide. A few e-mails to regular contributors and I had a list Santa will be delighted to receive. To illustrate this, of course, I needed a suitable image. Which is why, despite being off cakes at the moment, I bought 2 boxes of mince pies.

Two, because my first attempt didn't look right when the magazine came back from the designer. Boxes, because it seems you can't just buy a single mince pie. The bigger problem is, I don't like them very much!

More details on RMweb. 

Warehouse Wednesday: Stone warehouse, Port St Mary

"Hooray, a real warehouse on a Wednesday", I hear you cry. 

 It's true, this stone building is the first for a while, but finding genuine warehouses isn't easy. I really need to get out and bag a few before they all disappear. 

Anyway, this one is from Port St Mary on the Isle of Man and taken about 3 years ago. Apart from that, I know nothing about it. 

The stone is pretty common Manx stuff, and the rendered extension does nothing for the aesthetics of the structure. It would be pretty easy to model though and at least the colours blend nicely together. 

Now THAT'S what I call a superstructure

In search of ideas for Mohan, I spent an hour or so trawling the web looking at small, modern, tugboats. Eventually, I found the BRatt design by Robert Allan Ltd. I like the look of it and the hull I have isn't so far away from the prototype I can't live with the discrepancy, so I let it influence my efforts.

I made a few changes as I only had photos to work from at the time - and of course, my hull is a different shape. The result looks OK. Once in place I felt it needed to move forward slightly, but that's easy enough with cereal packet card and masking tape.

Next, it was time for plastic:

I'm keeping things simple with 1mm sheet cut out as neatly as I can manage and glued with MEK pack. This is the stage I really enjoy, noodling around with plastic watching the model come together. Not following a plan helps now as I get to say if it looks tight, it is right.