Painting the toilet part 1

 

The instructions for this model are fascinating when it comes to paint. Every colour is mixed, and Artitec details how much of each colour should be added to the mix. 

This is nice, but a bit of a faff, especially if you need a second batch of a particular colour and then have to match the colour you used before. So, I went my own way, aiming for 80% of the result, for 20% of the effort. 

I was lucky that the one colour you don't have to mix is for the woodwork - Humbrol Matt Leather (62). There is a pot in my stash, picked up cheaply in a bag of five tinlets from Anoraks Anonymous. A single coat of this produces, to my eye, a nicely worn paint finish. I've never planned this is a perfect building. 

The stucco walls are simply Cream (103) stippled with Light Stone (121) using a sponge. It looks just like the photo on the box, and if I need to touch an area up, the paint is in the pot.  

ME Show haul

 

For once at a show, I had a shopping list. OK, it was "Battery Boxes", but at least there was a plan. A couple of work projects require them, and I knew Component Shop had a stand - although it took me a couple of circuits to spot them!

While waiting, I was taken by a long, flexible LED, and it was too cheap to say no to. Once I've fired it up, I'll post on here. 

Talking of cheap, one trader had brass section at 2012 prices, so I stocked up. How this stuff was still on the stand after four days is a mystery. It just shows, there are bargains out there, you just have to look out for them.  

Midlands Model Engineering Show 2026

This year's model engineering show was a little special for me. Our boat club always puts on a display, and I'd entered my Dad's Victorian Steam launch. This isn't a competition, although there is a Best Boat On The Stand vote; it's just a chance to show off his workmanship. 

Dad was always proud of this model. OK, it's electrically powered rather than steam, but he put a lot of effort into the wooden deck, and it shows. The lines of the model are pleasing, so it doesn't look out of place at the show. Happily, the "Little Brian" figure is about the right scale too, so he got to attend a show we had been visiting for many years. 

Elsewhere, the number of models in competitions seemed to be up. I know there was a dip after everyone finished projects while locked away during Covid. Maybe enough time has elapsed for them to complete something else?

Engineering shows are always home to a wide variety of disciplines, and it was fun to watch some radio-controlled helicopters operating at the side of the car park. The team putting this display on explained some of the challenges they face. These aren't drones, there is no autopilot. You have to fly the things. Lucky for me, the conditions were just suitable for the show. 24 hours earlier, it was too windy. 

I like talking to people at shows, it's amazing who you meet. The builder of this studio-scale model of Skydiver, from the Anderson show UFO, had worked on the Large Hadron Collider in the past, but now, aside from a little teaching work, spends his time building military models. Well, that and a rather nice large-scale Routemaster bus. 

Since I attended on the final day of the event, cake options were limited, but the carrot cake was a winner. 

Anyway, let's let the photos do the talking, with an album over on Flickr. 

Saturday Film Club: Diesel and Electric Blue The Movie

Another one of those videos which makes you realise how dull the modern railway is compared to the blue diesel days almost 40 years ago. Has anyone got a time machine? 

More stuff for the Beatties collection

I sometimes wonder if I've acquired all the Beatties stuff there is out there, but no, there's always something new. In this case, a Beatties special Scalextric catalogue. 

That name on the front is printed, not a sticker, indicating that the chain of shops was going to distribute enough catalogues to make a special print run viable. Did Scalextric put it on for a valued retailer, or did Beatties have to pay for the print run as an advert?

Inside, it looks a bit basic. Modern cars are better detailed and decorated than these ones, but it's still basically a fun racing game, and I'd consider robustness an asset. 

Wandering around GETS with my boss in tow, we reached the Elaine's Train stand and Elaine said, "I've got something for you.", presenting me with a couple of long bags marked Hornby. These are designed to carry yard lengths of flexitrack. Peco make something similar in paper nowadays. 

Of course, I am very excited about this. My boss rolls her eyes. This isn't the first time she's seen plastic bags come my way. At least this one didn't arrive at the office, to be posted on!

You'll want to see a photo of course, so I had to find someone to hold the things. 

 Well, who else? 

BRM December 2026

It's the December issue, even though it appears at the start of November, I feel there should be some festive content, which is why my first practical in this issue is a 7mm scale Christmas tree. 

It's a bit of fun, and I'm quite pleased with the baubles. 

I head outdoors for the main piece, and build a greenhouse with its surrounding garden.  

The greenhouse is a WWS kit, and the rest stuff I picked up at shows or had in the stash. I took this scene to the GBMRS show, and it was much admired; someone even tried to buy it off me!

My camera has been out. First, we have 7mm scale Offerston Quay. 

A stunning layout, based on my model Ruston Quays, but far better made. World of Railways Gold members get a short video showing the layout off with commentary by the builder. 

Moving down the scales, in 4mm, we have Guinea Street. 

This is a micro, shot at SWAG last year. Like many small layouts, it's very highly detailed with loads of atmosphere. 

Finally, we go down a scale again, this time N gauge OWDLADD. 

Another small layout, but ideal for the home as it offers both scenery, and a continuous run. 

BRM is available from all good newsagents, supermarkets and our online store.  

Part fit check

 

I spent a lot of time on the dry-fit stage of the French WC kit. There wasn't a rush, and I wanted to enjoy the build. More importantly, if significant work was required, the kit would need to go back in the box. Resin isn't lovely stuff to sand, the dust isn't good for you. Bad enough when it's just me, but we don't need to be exposing the public to anything. 

Luckily, there wasn't an issue. All the parts were moulded square and true. A bit of brushable superglue was all that I needed to hold the main walls together. 

The inside is a different matter. Once I'd figured out where everything went, it was a bit confusing; there were quite a few gaps that needed attention.  

Dealing with these was a mix of bits of Microstrip, and the filler I bought earlier in the day. The results aren't perfect, but they will do the job as you can't see much from outside. 

 

And here we have the model plonked together. Obviously, the roof and modesty screens aren't attached at this stage, these will go on after painting. It's a really lovely little model, though. And yes, everyone did think I was weird for building it - but then that's part of the fun!

A French WC kit

 

Picking projects to work on during a demo is a challenge. It must be something that doesn't need deep and prolonged concentration. A minimal toolkit too. Wagon kits are good, and I did have one in the box, but looking through the stash, I found this Artitec kit for a French toilet. Bought at Ally Pally earlier this year, I have it because I fancied a go at a kit from this manufacturer. The subject just amused me. 

Looking at the parts, I reasoned that all I needed was an abrasive stick, and some superglue. I could fiddle with part fit if required, and take my time assembling things, allowing for interruptions while chatting. 

My rule is that I'm there to talk, not to find some modelling time. A demo where nothing gets built is a good demo. Even at a busy show, there will be some dead time at the end of the afternoon, and having something to tinker with avoids sitting there, grinning like a loon, hoping someone would drop by and talk to me.  

GBMRS haul

You know the rules, when visiting a show, at least one item must be purchased. Even when your time wandering around is very limited. 

So, I had no choice. 

First up, a very sensible buy, considering the event is run by the man who publishes the Hornby Collectors Club magazine. 

A lovely, and not at all accurate plastic kit of Hornby's own factory. It fits with the series I've been writing, building these vintage models, so in theory, this will be fodder for a future article. The only worry is, I have the main building in my collection - have I written this up in the past? For a fiver, I won't lose sleep!

Next, a practical buy. 

My Off White AK pen was looking battered after the CatBus. It's a popular colour, I bought the last one on the stand. In fact, it was under the stand; the seller had to dig through his box of spare stock. As for the putty, well, I know I have a tube somewhere, I just can't remember where, and I needed it for the demo. 

Now the fun stuff. 

The big, ugly, unrealistic colour light signal that has been in the Hornby range since the 1980s. I've seen it in many a catalogue and wondered about it. Well, wonder no more; I own a boxed example! This will make another appearance here, once I get it working. 

Finally.

The 1980s Hornby Rocket set. Yes, I have the modern one, and a Tri-ang version, but this completes the line-up. There is work to do as I'm told the motor is dead. And the con-rod is disconnected. And the crown lose on the chimney. 

But the price was less than the coaches would be worth, so I felt it worth a punt. Again, we'll have a look at this on here in due course.  

 

The Great British Model Railway Show 2026

Welcome to my stand at the GBMRS. As usual, it's a selection of projects that I've built for magazines and on this blog. It's not a BRM event, so the tables are full of the contents of my head!

Since losing my Dad, it's a show I have to do on my own. Fortunately, the stewarding is carried out by members of the L&WMRS, so there's no problem with a short comfort breaks, tea delivery, or the chance to collect my lunch. As an added bonus, on Saturday, my boss Debbie, and colleague Steven turned up to do a bit of layout scouting. Both were roped in to pretend they were me for a few minutes. 

None of this is a problem. I spent pretty much the entire weekend chatting to people - which is my favourite part of the hobby, and certainly makes the day pass quickly. As well as a couple of battery-powered working layouts, I had my G1 loco available on a rolling road. Kids were invited to drive it, and also switch the "smoke" on and off. They loved doing this, and I encouraged parents to come around the back to capture the moment on their phones. 

All this meant even less wandering time than normal. A shame, since the quality of layouts was very high. You can expect to see a few on the pages of BRM (I carried out a shoot on the Friday evening, and there will be others) as well as at Warners shows. 

Trade was fine, and as I'll show tomorrow, liberated a little cash from me. 

Numbers looked good, and everyone seemed to be enjoying themselves. We saw more families than normal, possibly because the show takes place in the motor museum, so people can enjoy both cars and trains. 

Everyone was pretty well behaved to. I always stick "Do not touch" signs on the display, and only had to ask a couple of adults to comply. One got in a huff, especially when I refused to sell him my latest magazine project. The other said "Oh, I'm always doing that" as though this is an excuse. I'm happy to talk anyone through anything on the stand, and if we do that, I'll normally hand it over for a good look, highlighting any potential breakable parts. Is it so unreasonable to ask people to look with their eyes, and not with their fingers? And why is is older adults who struggle with this?  

I even managed some CatBus chat, of course it was on the stand, with the owner of the layout that inspired me to head to London and then buy a kit, plus a family whose child was called Howl, after the studio Ghibli film Howl's Moving Castle!

All in all, a very good weekend, where I managed very little modelling, as it should be. There is a French toilet block (more of that next week) and the brake van that goes along each year gained some partitions and sandboxes. If you dropped by for a chat, thanks very much, I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did. And I hope you enjoy this blog too. 

There are some photos from the show on my Flickr album.  

  

Saturday Film Club: 1990: Building Dioramas and Models

Let's head back to the good old days, when TV used miniatures to help explain things. Miniatures built, and presented by Matt Irvine. 

The CatBus has arrived!

 

What colour is a CatBus? 

On stage, it's bright orange, but in the films, there is a bit more subtlety, so I've plumped for more AK Off-white (must get another one of those) and the same company's Brown. Even though the parts were primed in white, it took at least three coats to build a depth of colour I was happy with. Blasting things with a hair dryer is very effective. The paint seems to take quite a while, admittedly in cold conditions, to harden so one coat doesn't lift the previous one otherwise. 

Painting the brown is tricky as those pens really don't offer as sharp a point as I'd like. Again, at least three coats were required. 

Not all the paints are the same. Both the red nose and purple flying mice wings cover in one go. I used two flavours of purple in quick succession to blend the colours as I could see from a film still.  

The finishing touch was the route - 1 South Farm, my local bus service. Well, I'd like to travel by CatBus, although I'm not sure that it would be great at following the correct route if my cat is any guide!

All done, and I'm very happy. This was a fun project that I wanted to put some time into for several evenings. It's not serious, but that's what keeps me interested. 

 

Paint pen effects

I'll admit, I don't really know what I'm doing with paint pens. Obviously there are many hours of YouTube out there, but I don't have time to dig through it all, so I've read a couple of articles (sooooo much quicker than video) and dived in. 

First, we have the garden around the house. 

One challenge is to match the colours to the stills from the film of My Neighbour Totoro, which seem to change quite a bit. Then to remember that I've only seen the stage show (still looking for a DVD), and so I want a nice-looking model. It's not about authenticity. 

AK's Off White seems a reasonable base colour for the tree trunk and ground. Arguably, they should both be brown, but we are in a fantasy land. The plants are picked out in cheap pen Dark Olive, which looks really nice, but cried out for some highlights. With paint, I'd dry-brush, but that's not an option with the pens (I wonder if I could drag colour from the pen onto a brush? One to try), so I simply picked up high areas on the ground cover using the pointed end, and streaked the leaves of the tree. 

Working on a plastic base that has been primed with white, this seems to allow the colours to merge very slightly, and the effect is quite attractive, not unlike the hyperreal painting military modellers are so fond of. 

You'll notice some pen testing in the area that will be hidden under the house. These paints change colour as they dry, and I wasn't sure what they would look like in real life. 

Moving on to the house itself, the pure white walls look a bit stark, so I base-coated with AK off-white, left it to dry, then top-coated with cheap pen white. The paint is slightly translucent, so we get a nice aged effect. 

Green windows are painted first, and then many coats of white tidy up the frames. Working with a brush would be easier here and the pen points aren't nearly as sharp as I'd like. 

The roof is red, but pure cheap pen red is a bit bright. I left it to dry while pondering, then coated the tiles with AK Dunkelgelb, and wiped it down the roof immediately with my finger. Result - a nicely aged effect. Even where the paint has worn away from the edges in a couple of places looks good. Not that anyone will be looking at the roof much anyway. 
 

Cheap paint pens

I'm thinking that the CatBus would be a good project to paint entirely with acrylic paint pens. Recently, I've found them really useful - no messing around mixing paint and then cleaning up the brush. Perfect for the time-poor modeller who can see a deadline approaching. The speed the paint dries is another help here. 

To date, my tools have been from Ammo and MiG, proper modellers products, but at my club, the chaps working on the modular layout pointed me at this pack on Amazon.  They are getting on well with them, and for the price, an experiment wasn't going to hurt. 

A benefit is that this provides a lot of different colours, which may be helpful for figure painting where I need a tiny bit of colour, but am too stingy to splash out £4+ on a tinlet of Humbrol. I might love purple, but I doubt it would have gone off by the second time I opened the pot. 

The pens are normal pen size, and have a brush end, and a "pointed" one. Oddly, the brush is the more pointed of the two. Another moan (this is the internet) is that the pen doesn't say what colour it is, you are left to compare it to the back of the box and guess. 

The CatBus

 

Remember when I went to see "My Neighbour Totoro"? I quickly became obsessed with the CatBus, but not so much I'd pay £40 for a plush version that didn't look that great to me. 

Instead, I dug around the internet for a garage production model, and found this one from (appropriately enough for me) Nom Nom Figures. At just over 10cm tall, it's a nice size. There isn't room in my cabinet for anything much bigger, and this is going on display!

A few days after ordering, a modest cardboard box arrived, full of 3D printed parts, all nicely enclosed in bubblewrap. 

The printing is nice and smooth. The part fit is amazing, considering the cat curls around the roof of the house. I can't fault it. 

Time to start painting! 

GETS haul

 

Not a lot of stuff for me from GETS. There were a few purchases for work projects, but I'm still being restrained as I have so much stuff in the stash, and not enough time to build it all!

Of course, as regular readers will know, I'll buy pretty much anything Groudle Glen Railway-related, so when I saw that Saddletank Books had some bookmarks and a badge featuring "Polar Bear", they were obviously coming home with me. I don't need three bookmarks of course; a couple will be Christmas presents in a few months, an idea I like so much, I may need more. 

Better still, Pauline has promised to add "Sea Lion" to the range in the future, knowing this guarantees even more sales. 

The Warley 21st wagon turned up in a rummage box for three quid, a big drop from its original price, I seem to recall.  

And more paint pens. My stocks of these are growing, which is handy, as you'll find out later this week.  

Great Electric Train Show 2026

I don't know if this can described as a "trend", but there were several layouts this year that offered little operation at the front, replying on the fiddle yard operator being efficient and sending around a constant procession of trains. 

Instead of operation, they provided superb scenic displays. I particularly liked Penhelig, seen above. It's a halt, and very accurately, doesn't have much other railway around it, but treated as an attractive moving picture, it just works. 

I like this idea, and it's one I've pondered building in the past. You need a wide selection of trains made up, ready to be fired around the layout so the viewers aren't left waiting for some movement, but for a stock builder, that's no problem. In my head, I'd also include a couple of animated scenes to provide interest. The fun would be in the building. 

A feature that intrigues me, is this coaling stage on the layout Marley Potts & Witherwack Sidings 

Is there a prototype for this? It reminds me of the Hornby/Pola model from the 1970s that I built last year.

Layout quality overall was really high. Even Making Tracks was behaving itself on the Sunday when I visited, although Pete mentioned that the day before, one of the control boxes had released some of those bad electrical smells we all dread...

Food wasn't bad. Lunch was a very nice jacket potato with chilli and cheese, which looked a bit like the eggs in Alien. After this I really fancied something sweet, but there wasn't anything on offer, apart from bars of chocolate, so I nipped up to see the nice chaps of the Double O Gauge Association, and blagged a jam doughnut. 

Numbers looked good, but it wasn't hard to get around. Layout watching was a little challenging, because of the numbers who are filming the models, and so have to occupy a prime spot for a long while.  Grabbing a photo is one thing, long video sequences? Not so sure, especially those filming on an A4 size iPad, for whom there is a special place in hell reserved. The bit where the only model trains as N gauge GWR!

Anyway, more photos on my Flickr feed.  

Saturday Film Club: Mazda K360: The quirky three-wheeled truck that changed Japan’s roads

When I mentioned the Mazda K360 a few days ago, it inspired me to try to find some video of one in action. This is the best the internet can serve up, and it's an interesting, and pleasingly concise piece. 

Off to Gaydon this weekend for the Great British Model Railway Show

 

This weekend, I can be found at the top of the escalators at the British Motor Museum, Gaydon, for the Great British Model Railway Show. 

All being well, I'll fill a couple of tables with various projects I've carried out of the years. In deference to the organiser, many with be from The Hornby Collector and TT:120 club magazines, but there will be a few BRM and Garden Rail projects too. 

Please drop by and say hello. I'm there to talk all things model railway, and not to get any modelling done!

Visit the Great British Model Railway Show website.  

Look mum, no wires!

Out in Birmingham last week, I found myself tram spotting while waiting to go into the town hall. This is the section of the line where the trams run on battery power to avoid having to install overhead wires. 

For modellers of the modern scene, this is a gift. The hardest part of any tramway build is the knitting in the sky. Now we can just pretend that the model shows a battery section - job done!

It also occurred to me that it's been a long while since I've ridden Brum trams, and the only place they went in those days was Wolverhampton. The route is now being extended, and the trams have changed too! Another for the list of places to go.  

Why was I in Brum? Well, an evening making my little grey cells do some work...