Accucraft Sea Lion

I recently read on Facebook, someone complaining that their feed was full of people on model railway groups posting the latest thing they had bought and it was getting boring. Well, today I'm doing just that.

This is my latest purchase - a 7/8th scale live steam model of the Groudle Glen locomotive Sea Lion.

I don't care if it's boring. This is far from the usual parade of Hornbachpol models you'll see elsewhere.

Saving for this model has taken my father and I the best part of 4 years. As soon as it was announced, I ordered one and so we had a goal to work to. Excess stuff has been sold on eBay and other odd bits of cash have gone into the account to raise the sum equivalent to nearly two Mulberry handbags (can you tell I write chick-lit?).

In the cab you can see all the controls. A chunk of the purchase price is taken up with the factory fitted radio control system. Manual control is an option but if you care buying something special, you might as well tick all the options. Besides, it's more fun than crawling around trying to furckle in the cab one a ground level line.

The model is lovely. Yes, it's not finescale perfect but compromises have been made because it has one advantage over your plastic chuffer - real metal and a belly full of real steam!

This model is available from Track-Shack.

On sale today!

Some of you may know that for the last few years, I've been working with my friend Candice writing a novel. Well, today is the big day that it goes on sale!

Kate vs The Dirtboffins started out as a few random ideas thrown around by people stuck in the first quango to be closed down by the last government. We had to go in each day to be paid, but there was literally nothing to do.

Chatting (as you do) someone suggested we should set up a "change management" company to help close down all the other bits of government that were due for the chop. From there we came up with our characters and took it from there.

The process has taken over 5 years - mostly because real life kept getting in the way.

Somehow, despite me having never read any, the book became a little bit chick-lit as well as a lot Tom Sharpe with great big dollops of humour. With our commercial head on, these are the two most popular genres so lets hope for a few sales. Don't let the girlie cover put you off, it's readable by both sexes.

Along the way, I've read a lot, visited literary festivals and met proper writers and enjoyed the process a lot. If anyone thinks they have a book in them, go for it. Writing is (mostly) fun. Writing as a team is even more so with the added benefit of cake during those important meetings to discuss the plot.

Anyway, head over to our writing blog for more details and to buy your copy!

In other news: This is the 3500th post on this blog!

Warehouse Wednesday: Demolishing Ford Foundry

Another Not a Warehouse this week but digging around my collection, I thought this deserved an airing.

Heading north from Leamington station, the view from the window was either enhanced or ruined, depending on your opinion, by Ford Foundry. This ugly industrial plant seemed oddly out of place so close to the town centre. The feeling got worse as the area around it filled with posh housing estates.

Eventually the plant was declared uneconomic and closed down, the workforce largely being moved to other sites within the company. This meant the demolisher's could move in and tear the place down. It's not a Morrisons store and brownfield site no-one seems to want to buy.

It's worth clicking on the image above as I've put it on Flickr full size (click through to the site and then click on the image again to magnify it. That way you can appreciate the complexity of the building innards. As a modelling prospect, forget it. Far too fiddly. But it would look great if done properly...

Mini Phils

Well, that's Christmas sorted then. Thanks to the efforts of Modelu, I have tiny 3D versions of me.

The scanning took place back in October at the Great Electric Train show. I was dressed in hoodie and backpack, just like a proper train spotter.

Now, I have been printed. At the time I ordered a 4 & 7mm version. When Alan delivered the prints at the weekend, he included a reject version of the 7mm version. I can't remember what it wrong but I'm happy to have an extra figure.

Now, i know of a 4ft wide 3D printer. If we used the data file on this, the result would be 2.4 metres high - slightly larger than real life. If I get them working now, I reckon everyone I know can have a statue of me in their front garden by boxing day!

Crowd control

All being well, I'm asleep after a busy weekend at the NEC for the Warley. Hopefully the wooden device above has made my weekend a little easier.

It might look like a shelf but in fact it's a major advance in crowd control.

One of the problems I found at Peterborough was that the tarmac area at the front of the layout is very inviting to visitors. Several used it to lean on and one chap actually plonked down a sheet of paper and prepared to write some notes until I requested he do otherwise.

Had I now stopped him, I'd have had to replace the cardboard which would have been embossed with his scribblings. Not an easy job as it goes under the arches and is well glued in place.

It's almost as though people lose the ability to think when they come in the door. Quite what posses you to think that using someones model as a desk or something to prop you up I don't know. It's not just at shows either - I've seen people merrily dump boxes on the track of our club O gauge layout. Indeed, years ago, we had one member who would come in every evening and deposit his toolbox on the layout, even when people were working on it.

Every. Single. Week.

So, £2.56 of plywood cut into strips will hopefully keep wandering hands at bay. I did think about putting a covered slope on top but that makes inserting the bolts difficult. Instead, I plan to cover it with cake to eat over the weekend.

Northampton & District Narrow Gauge Modellers show 2015

Small shows can be just as much, if not more fun, than larger ones.

45 minutes drive from me is the village of Weedon Bec and in the hall was a little show for the narrow gauge fan.

There was a reasonable selection of layouts or varying qualities and a few trade stands. Catering was good with delicious tea and cake.

The main joy though was all the chat. We spent just over 2 hours at the show and had a thoroughly good time. I met people I know and people I don't who know me. We talked about unusual little railways. It was very, very, friendly. In fact everyone seemed to be having a good time.

If you wanted tail-chasers, there were a couple of Ffestiniog layouts to keep you happy, although neither was home to trains hurtling around as the real thing doesn't do this.

Layout I wanted to build was Yardely Wharf, a minimum space model with only 2 points. Tall buildings and a deep quayside were right up my street. I'd like to do it with the atmosphere generate by Chris Payne's excellent Brink Valley Tramway.

A fun day out - more please!

More photos on Flickr.

Fun on Dr Who day

November 23rd marks the date when Dr Who was first broadcast on the BBC. To celebrate this, Twitter and Facebook fills up with fan pictures. This year, I joined in.

Scene 1: "Do you happen to have a Police telephone box in there?

During the week I picked up a mini K9 model from a pound shop. In the pack were a couple more people including Sarah-Jane Smith and so I thought it would be fun to pose the two in front of one of the railway arch businesses on Ruston Quays.

The in-joke for BRM folk is that Chris Duffill is one of our video guys (along with Martin Tempest) and a real sci-fi nerd, and he does have a Tardis!

Scene 2: "Are you my mummy?"

The other figure in the pack was the child from the story "The Empty Child". This spooky character spends the show looking for his mother having been transformed by alien technology.

Handily, I just happened to have a couple of Egyptian Mummies from a set of plastic figure bought many, many, years ago. It just shows, if you hang on to this stuff long enough, you'll find a use for it.

Packing for Warley

 

Today is all about heading to the big tin shed at the edge of Solihull and setting up Ruston Quays for the Warley Exhibition.

 

I'm part of the BRM stand, which according to my guide is A9, right behind Hornby. That should be interesting.

 

Anyway, assuming I make it there all right, please come along and say hello. With a bit of luck you'll be able to have a play with the train set.

 

Warley show website.

Minic panel

Preparing Ruston Quays for its trip to the NEC this weekend I've been tidying up the control panel. One job is to remove the buttons for the electric uncoupling system as we've moved on from it.

The little panel is a bit of a classic from me - a sheet of white plasticard with lines from vinyl tape. In the past I've used go-faster-stripe from car factors but it seems this has fallen out of favour so it's harder to get. Fortunately, most model boat and aircraft supplies do rolls with loads of widths with more than enough for panels and you can have funky colours too. I'm not funky, so I stick with black.

Switches are fitted into holes drilled in the plastic, something easier to do neatly than it is in wood. The are designed to clip into a thin material, normally metal, but 2mm thick sheet seems OK.

Best of all, the plastic stays clean, or at least can be wiped clean if covered in mucky finger marks!

Warehouse Wednesday: Weedon Ordnance Depot

If Napoleon had invaded Britian, where would the Royal family and Government decamped to?

Weedon Bec of course.

Which is why the fabulous Weeden Ordnance depot exists. Eight brick warehouses set around a branch from the Grand Union Canal. I'm stood on a bridge in front of the pavilion - from here the canal carried on to the main canal with the entrance protected by a portcullis.

Bonepart not making it to Britian, the fithy Frenchie being defeated a year before the building work was completed, the site has been used by various branches of the military until the 1980s and is now being converted to industrial units. Grade II listing means these fine buildings cannot be demolished and so will remain a prominent feature on the landscape forever.

Obviously canals are great but once railways appeared on the scene, a connection from the London to Birmingham line was desirable. The exact date this took place is unclear but appears to be around 1890. Both standard and narrow gauge lines ran around the site.

Put simply, this has terrific layout potential. It's a big site but built large enough, ought to provide plenty of operation. The buildings are attractive and for the most part - intact. There is security so I didn't explore other than to take the photo at the top (click for a bigger version).

The best on-line history I can find is this PDF from the council.

Subterrainia Britianica has more photos and history

More information about the insides of the warehouses here.

Challenge Hull

Chatting to one of the clubs at the model boat show, they mentioned a "Chairman's Challenge" that involved every member buying a standard hull and having to make a boat from it. The design was up the individual member and several different models were produced.

Thinking that this was a good idea, I had a chat with our club secretary who seemed to be up for it. An informal meeting of a dozen members at the stand showed the idea had legs. If we could find a suitable hull for a fiver then we'd give it a go.

On the Sarik Vacform stand, there was a nice 13 inch long hull and after a bit of cajoling, I managed to get the price down below a fiver if we ordered 20. That's what we did and a few days later a big cardboard box arrived with the hulls in. Each one is moulded in 1.5mm thick plastic. Not sure what sort yet but it seems more styrene than ABS.

Half the pile were snapped up by members at the last meeting and hopefully the rest will soon find homes. Several ideas have already been mooted so I'm hoping that come the open day we'll see a variety of interesting models.

Me?

I have two hulls. Once I fancy turning into a pocket tugboat. The other, I'll explain when I get started.

Pointless graph

 

Doing a little painting this weekend, I spotted this graph on the side of the can. I'm assuming it was drawn by someone who thinks graphs are just clipart because it's meaningless.

 

Essentially, what it says is that gloss paint is shinier than eggshell. Who'd have guessed that? Disappointingly, matt paint doesn't make an appearance as I'm fascinated to know how it would score.

 

I wonder what the methodology is to produce these results? There must be some science surely?

 

I'm imagining boffins wearing lab coats shining lights on specially prepared painted panels and then using the glare-o-meter to measure the reflected sheen. The glare-o-meter will have a readout, probably a big swinging needle, that points at the three universally agreed levels of reflection.

 

All this will explain why Satinwood doesn't reach the giddy heights of High and misses by more than Eggshell fails to reach Low. At least Gloss has gone all the way through High, although there's no indication of how many coats of paint are required for this, nor the colour chosen. Silver paint would presumably be glossier than black for example.

 

Or maybe the glare-o-meter can tell the difference between different sheen's. Must be quite a tool.

Behind the scenes brickwork

 

If you've watched the latest BRM DVD then in the Ruston Quays chapter, there is a little footage showing the smoking chimney looking from the back of the layout. As you can see from the screen grab above, this highlights that the smaller warehouse didn't have a back to it.

 

From normal viewing angles, this doesn't matter but if I think like this, I'd not have bothered with the point rodding or the backs of the brick parapets. I have a feeling that there are some interesting angles for photographs to be taken from back here so a bit of detail is required.

 

Which is why, before I fixed the building in position, I've added some back wall brickwork to fill in the gap. I should have done this as part of the construction originally but the bodging doesn't seem to look too bad.

 



Next time you see the layout, ask nicely and you can look around the back to see my efforts!

Underground video

Well, I had a box of Bachmann S Stock and access to a model railway with fourth rail. It would have been silly not to give one a run on the other wouldn't it?

Painted barge

Painting the barge took longer than building it.

First, there was a spray of Halfords matt black.

Next the cover received a coat of Railmatch Weathered Black to contrast nicely with the hull.

With the Humbrol paint from the Bantam tug still on the bench, I used the red and green on the front and back. Where I needed white, it's 147 as usual. All needed 2 coats to cover, event the thick red.

Finally the we have what I thought were stickers but turned out to by vinyls requiring cutting out and fixing with UHU. To be fair, they are very flexible with no problems on the curved bits.

The finished model has a certain charm. I'm not sure I'd want to use it on a layout as it's not very sharply detailed, but that's more to do with my style of modelling. Lots of people would be perfectly happy and it easier to produce good results than with the balsa wood kits on the market since there's no grain to hide.

Another option might be to just use the hull and scratchbuild the top. Since these parts are a pretty good shape yet hard to make from scratch, compared to other options, it could be a cheap move for anyone wanting canal boats.

Finally, there would be space for radio control in there if you used small and light batteries. Just a thought.

Kit from Sarik Vacform.

Vac-formed barge kit

 

I can't resist a reasonably priced and interesting kit so at the model boat show, I came away with a couple of things from Sarik Hobbies. The first of these is shown above - a vacuum moulded barge kit.

 

The model can be built with or without a cover over the load. If you prefer it open, square plastic tube is supplied to make up the model's interior. That's quite a bit of scratchbuilding but looking at the photos, the results are nice.

 

I'm inclined to think that if you go to those lengths, the vac-formed kit might not be to your taste. Corners are necessarily rounded and the detail isn't sharp. This is due to the process not the makers, in most respects, it's as good as any vac-formed kit.

 

The worst part of any kit like this is cutting the parts from the main sheet. Because of the curved corners, you have to guess where the waste stops and parts start. A little lateral thinking and this kit is pretty good. I cut oversize and then sand back using a large block.

 

After this, assembly is simpled with liquid glue. A piece of tube provides the chimney and a bent paperclip is the tiller arm. Should you prefer to make an unpowered butty boat then a template is included to cut the larger wooden tiller from plastic.

Warehouse Wednesday - Birmingham engineering works

In Birmingham, 5 minutes walk from Snow Hill Station, and just over the road from The Wonderful World of Trains and Planes display is this building housing an engineering works.

It's a reminder that Brum used to be all about making things. As it is, 5 more minutes stroll puts you in the Jewelery Quarter among dozens of tiny workshops with people working precious stones and expensive metals.

Modellers will like the simple windows (scribed perspex would work for these) with occasional RSJ dividers. Also the massive door (why so tall?) with peeling paint and finally, the weathering beneath the windows

Tarroo Ushtey plan

You meet some top people in our hobbies. Chatting to Brian King on the Manx Model Boat Club stand at the model boat show, I admired his model of the working boat Tarroo Ushtey. I said I fancied making a model of it. He said he had a plan and would send me a copy.

A week later, a fat envelope arrives from the Isle of Man and in it is a copy of the plan. Brilliant!

At 1:24, the boat comes in at 63cm. Looking at it, I think I might reduce this a bit but the deciding factor is likely to be one of Macs Mouldings crane kits. Everything else is a scratchbuild but I've wanted to try one of these for ages.

Construction will have a wait a while, but I'd like to think I can complete it for next years show.

Incidentally, Tarroo Ashtey is Manx for "Water Bull" - quite an apt name for the boat.

A working model dredger

One of the highlights of the model boat show was the working model dredger on the Manx Model Boat club stand. It looks great and operates superbly and automatically. With plenty of taime available, I shot some video of it on my compact camera as an experiment.

I think it looks pretty good but what do you thing? Should I do more of this?

The soundtrack had to be replaced though as the hall was very noisy. Trust me, that Ukelele music is much better than the alternative!

If you want to see the working bits in operation, there is a video here.

Model boat show 2015

Ahoy there! With the Bantam tugboat finished, I was on the lookout for the next project. While there are several kits in the Parker stash, I've really enjoyed sctachbuilding this model and I want a bit more of that.

Next project wants to avoid the compromises forced on me by the commercial hull but I don't fancy a full plank on frame construction. The solution might well be the Tarroo Ushtey seen above from the breathtaking Manx Model Boat club stand. Chatting to the man who built it, the plans should eventually be on their way to me. I'm sure I've either seen this model, or even the prototype before and liked the look of it in the past.

Elsewhere there was more inspiration in the form of a chairman's challenge competition run by another boat club. Members had been given a standard hull and told to go away and do something with it. This sounds like great fun, the hull was pretty simple and left loads to the imagination. The speedboat above was one entry.

Chatting to our club secretary and then some of the members, we thought it was a great idea. Casting around the hall, I've done a deal with Sarik Hobbies for some excellent vac-formed hulls with a discount for quantity. Mind you, I also managed to buy a couple of kits off them and was horribly tempted by a 3D printer...

Apart from this, well there were lots of boast to look at. More than last year I think as the trade stand numbers had dipped a bit. Better get used to that as the rumours are a couple more won't be there next year either.

Taking photos, I began to recognise some of the models on display. On many stands, it seems that the same guys will display models and they show the same ones as last year. And the year before. There were a couple of instances of multiple models by the same people that appeared to be there to fill space than showcase the best modelling. I'm not snobby enough to only want to see perfection but I do think if you are going to show a model, you might dust it first.

Some of this is down to me being a regular at this event. A friend visiting for the first time managed to spend an enjoyable day there looking at everything so there's obviously plenty to entertain. My feeling was that numbers were down slightly and ages were up. Compared to a model railway show, I'd reckon the average age was about 10 years higher.

More photos on Flickr.