Hellingly Hospital in "Modelling the Southern"

There I am innocently standing in front of a nice man selling books at a show when my eye alights in a new publication called "Modelling the Southern - Volume 1: Ideas and Inspiration". I suddenly remember that I was asked to supply a couple of photos for a model making book along these lines a few months ago.

I wonder if it is this book. Picking it up to flick through from the back (we always do this, I wonder if Chinese people flick through from the front), I don't flick far before finding my layout, The Hellingly Hospital Railway, on the inside back cover.

Nice photo too - my favourite of the selection supplied.

Needless to say, all I get is credit. Not even (as far as I am aware) a free copy. If you feel this is a bad thing, click on the link below to buy your copy at a discount price from Amazon. Using this means I get a little cash as well - result !

Don't worry, there are lots of other good things in there for your money, at least there are if you think the modelling north starts at Watford anyway.

Buy Modelling the Southern - Volume 1: Ideas and Inspiration from Amazon.

Hellingly Hospital in Maquetren

Another print outing for the Hellingly Hospital Railway, but in a first for me, the magazine isn't English. No, you can now read about Hellingly in the Spanish mag, Maquetren.

Needless to say, my Spanish isn't good enough for this sort of thing but the English text was translated by Alberton Herrera who appears to have added a few extra web links in from my website for good measure. Actually, he could have written anything he likes as I can't read it either but no matter, I think I can trust him. Mind you, if anyone reading this fancies having a go at translating the PDF...

The 6 pages look really good and I even made the cover ! Foreign magazines always seem to look different to my eyes, not better or worse, just an indefinably "different". Maybe it's the mix of real and model trains, something that is only normally practised by one mag in the UK, Continental Modeller.

On my novel website, I describe myself as an "international wordsmith of repute" and so now I suppose this is really true. I'm sure a tour of the Continent can't be far away now.

Visit the Maquetran website.

3D printing - first results

Last week I opined about the future of modelling and wondered if 3D printing was going to make all those boxes of bits we model makers stash away obsolete. Not knowing the real answer I decided to take the plunge and order a couple of examples from Shapeways to see what they were like. The first has arrived.

The first thing is that the service was amazingly swift. I placed my order on Sunday and the box turned up on Wednesday. Not bad considering the contents didn't exist in anything other than a computer file when I requested them.

Anyway, my parcel contained an On30 steeple cab locomotive body that looks a heck of a lot like the one running on my model of the Hellingly Hospital Railway. The material its made in is described as "White, flexible and strong". It's certainly white, seems as flexible as similar thickness plastic and presumably has a similar strength although I've not tested this.

The surprise is the surface. I knew that 3D printers couldn't do curves very effectively, they render as a series of steps albeit tiny ones, but the verticals on this model have the texture of very fine sandpaper. I'm assuming that this is because the model is "grown" from a pile of powder. I'm not sure how to deal with this at the moment. My inclination is to shoot a coat of high-build primer over the whole thing to see if this smooths the surface without losing the lovely rivet detail on the ends.It's this that stops me sanding the model flat, well that and the feeling that I shouldn't need to. After all, if I have to sculpt the model locomotive out of a lump of plastic, this isn't the future. Well not yet anyway.

Never mind, I'm reasonably impressed. I'll see if I can turn this into a finished model. In the meantime, I've also got a K6 telephone box on order in a different material. We'll see how that turns out.

Snakes in ModelRail

A couple of months ago, ModelRail asked for more information on the snakes that operate points on the Hellingly Hospital Railway layout. I took an old article I wrote on the subject for the Double O Guage Association and thought I could just re-vamp it a little and send it in.

As it was, once I started I ended up re-writing the piece and even tweaking the diagram and photos. The results can be seen in the Q&A section. I'm even listed as a "Guest Expert" !

Hellingly locos

You gotta love eBay. Sometimes the strangest things pop up on it.

I have an alert set up for anything with the word "Hellingly" in it. Most of the time the results are platform tickets, maps or bits of Landrover. Once in a while though interesting items pop up. In this case, something from the model railway section.

Two things surprise me:

• The seller has heard you need light for good photos but not that the light should come from behind whatever you are taking a picture of.
• While I can understand building the locomotive, scratchbuilding the tramcar is different. It's not the easiest thing to do and unless you are planning to build a model of the line, and I have that particular prototype sown up thank you, why would you want it ?

Sadly I know no more. The models went for £57 which means someone has bought themselves a pair of second hand Tenshodo SPUDS for nearly the price of two new ones. I hope they models survive somewhere though.

Hellingly Hospital Railway in Model Rail

Back in May, Chris Nevard came over and took some photos of my model of the Hellingly Hospital Railway. The results can be seen in issue 149 of the magazine which should be in the shops when you read this (well, if you are reading it in October 2010 anyway - if not you'll need a back number). I've even made the front cover !

All this reminded me that I really should do something about the Hospital Railway Website. It's now been brought up to date with a few new pictures and a completely new (OK, copied from the Flockburgh site) design.

Wrapping chairs

It appears that I finally got something right !

On the Hellingly Hospital Railway, I have modelled the delivery of a set of boardroom chairs. In truth the scene was influenced by the purchase of a set of Springside whitemetal furniture rather than a deliberate attempt to recreate the prototype but that doesn't matter.

I decided that it would be unlikely that fine furniture would travel in a van without some sort of protection so the castings were wrapped in a bit of toilet paper and painted to represent hessian. The man peeking underneath makes the cameo for me and visitors to exhibitions seem to like it.

Anyway, it seems that the people at the GWR museum thought the same. On display in Steam is some furniture, and it's all wrapped up. Admittedly they have used brown paper but I suspect this might have been expediencey rather than absolute fidelity, however I assume they were working with some reliable information so we are both right.

Eating custard doughnuts in the gallery

Last week, Evan commented on my post mentioning that a local contemporary arts gallery director that likes his work and is very keen for it to be displayed. This reminds me I ought to post this story:

In 2003, our model railway club received an unusual request. The Ikon Gallery wanted to rent a small layout for part of an art exhibition. Intrigued, I answered the call and a few days later, Nigel, the director called in to see the Hellingly Hospital Railway. He was absolutely delighted and we they would borrow the model for three months. I would be required to attend a couple of times a month to sit beside it and demonstrate model making. In addition I was to fill a display case with examples to explain the hobby to gallery visitors.

On the appointed day, a van arrived to collect the model. I followed by train (the Ikon is in the middle of Birmingham, not an ideal; drive but easy train ride)to set it up. Our bit of the gallery was upstairs in a big white-painted room, not like the sort of exhibition hall we are used to at all ! The entire building was being given over to a huge installation by the artist Rirkrit Tiravaninija Rirkrit Tiravaninija called “Demo Station no.4”. Downstairs he had recreated Bar El Batey from San Juan. This was complete with pool room and bar along with some political drawings. Upstairs was home to a changing display of peoples creative hobbies. Along with myself, we saw calligraphy, origami, golf (?) and many others. The idea, as I understood it, was to celebrate ordinary people’s creativity and to look at the boundaries between what we traditionally define as “art” as produced by artists and the output of those not formally trained.

Each display was accompanied by a video made of its creator showing them talking about their hobby. Mine was filmed at home with the modeling board on the dining table. As I recall I rambled on about the different aspects for the hobby whilst one of our cats decided to “help” out. This made the final cut with cats being a common feature on many of the films. For someone not happy in front of the camera, I thought that the end result was pretty good. All the efforts to get a copy of the tape were in vain unfortunately as it’s a souvenir that I’d have liked.

On the opening night I turned up looking presentably smart and operated Hellingly for the entertainment of the first night crowd. They were a rather different group from the normal audience, better dressed and usually with a wine glass in hand. Very interested too with lots of questions that were a pleasure to answer. For most, it was the first time they had seen a proper model railway layout and it wasn’t what they had expected.

Over the next three months, every few weeks I took my bag full of modeling bits and a bite to eat in to sit beside the layout and make things up. Quite a few of the wagons running on Flockburgh emerged from these sessions. While I worked, visitors came to watch and ask questions. Again, most had never seen anything like this and were genuinely interested. I’d been a bit concerned that bored Birmingham youth would be using the free to enter gallery as somewhere to get out of the cold. As it was, this didn’t happen – the curator in charge of each room was able to read rather than act as a bouncer. The displays around me changed occasionally – I have a fine paper penguin, the result of an excellent set of instructions provided the paper folding society – and some were more interesting than others. Pen and nib collectors mounted a terrific display, much of which had been sourced locally from Brummie factories closing down.

Several visiting groups stick in the mid – a graphic design course tutor & students were particularly interested in the selection of Hellingly luggage labels attached to one of the fiddle yards. The varying typography was the cause of some discussion. I gave them a bit of spiel about old fashioned railway posters and the fact that these employed some of the great artists of the period. These things aren’t just for anoraks, they really are great examples of design and should be able to stand amongst any other artworks.

Another group were serious art nerds and we had quite a discussion around what constituted art. Apparently they felt that I wasn’t just taking part in the art installation, I was part of it. I am (or at least was) art.

Read more about the instilation here.

My train set gets junk mail

A few days ago, a letter arrived for "Hellingly Hospital Railwa". Inside there is an advert for the Cairn Hotel in Harrogate. The hotel appear to be trying to persuade my model of an asylum to indulge in a Super Spring Break. 2 nights for only £76.

Sadly it won't be taking up this fantastic offer due to being an inanimate object. Besides, it can't drive and find the walk from the station too much of a strain on it's spindly wooden legs.

Good grief, if it's getting mail from hotels, what next ? What are these models getting up to when not at exhibitions ?

Hellingly photo shoot

I spent several hours watching someone else doing some work on Saturday. Specifically, Chris Nevard taking photos of my model of the Hellingly Hospital Railway for a future feature in Model Rail Magazine.

It's great fun seeing how another person views your model. Chris looked at the layout with a view to how it will fit on an A4 page. Assuming all is OK once he gets his roll of film back from Boots or whatever he does in post production, there will be some really interesting images. I'm certainly looking forward to seeing the layout in print. Some of the angles aren't available to the viewer seeing us at a show - I don't let you poke your head through any of the holes allowing track into the fiddle yard or get underneath the overhead wires.

The good news was that the lighting built into the baseboard, a single 3 foot long fluorescent tube, was more than adequate for the photos. This just shows how simple illuminating a model railway can be. No need for fancy spotlights, just one fitting screwed to the back of the fascia. It's still the first tube too despite the layout being a decade old. Even if it did give up, a replacement will be easily available from a local DIY store.

Trainwest 2010

Nice show. Excellent layouts, actually, really excellent layouts. Trade OK, perhaps a few too many RTR in boxes for me, but there were one or two real gems too. They certainly took a few quid off me over the weekend. And I'm still wondering why I bought a set of Wall-E figures...

There were nice friendly people surrounding us - hello to the guys with Willesden Junction, hope you had a pleasant journey back home. In fact lots of nice friendly people were to be found both sides of the barrier. Lots of time was spent chatting and even a little learning. I now know that Jo Brand worked at Hellingly before embarking on a career in stand-up comedy. A little before the time I modelled it so there's no chance of adding a celebrity figure to the miniature population.

The show itself is held in a sports centre converted from an old aircraft hanger. The inside is nice but the outside is just a little bit uglier than you imagine it could be. Having said this, both here and just around the corner from out (excellent) accomodation there were some buildings that have given me ideas for future projects. More of this at the weekend.

The traditional "Layout Phil would like to build" prize goes to Quai:87, a finescale HO industrial model featuring 2 swing bridges, a sector place and turntable. Some mightly fine modeling and the weirdest shaped baseboard ever. It was on casters too ! There was some suggestion that the operators should wear cumberbunds decorated to act as a backscene...

Sadly, the first nice weekend of the year meant that the crowds were a little lighter than normal. If you live withing striking distance of the show and didn't go, then you missed out. Both this year and last, the quality has been far higher than you might expect from a provincial show. I'd certainly not have been diaspointed to have paid to come in.

In fact, the last word on this should go to our final visitor, Jo. He appeared to be around 5 years old and was a bit tearful at approaching the end of the day. His Dad explained that he had visited all the layouts very methodically. Twice.

A few photos on Flickr.

Official Trainwest website

Dead loco

By the time you are reading this, I should be at the Trainwest show with the Hellingly Hospital Railway.

As usual, preparation meant a quick wheel clean for all the locos. Opening the stock box, untouched since Uckfield least year, I was surprised to find a nice new motor wrapped in a plastic bag. Wondering why I had such a thing - I don't buy them for fun - it was about to go in a handy drawer when I realised. At the show were killed the Hunslet.

Somehow the power unit in the little engine had died. A quick scout round saw me swap money with Roxey Mouldings for a new one, which was promptly put in the box and forgotten about.

Until now. The defunct motor was quickly removed from the chassis and desoldered. A gear puller make short work of removing the worm, when I remembered I had it and stopped hammering away with a punch to push the shaft out.

The rear shaft had to be shortened and contrary to normal advice I do not employ a slitting disk of file - just a big pair of Zebra wire cutters. Despite being 15 years old, they still make quick work of this even though the result is a motor flying in one direction and a bit of metal in the other.

Re-assembly was the reverse of the above. Putting the screws in to hold the motor in the (High Level Models) gearbox is easier if you fill the slots with Blu-tack but otherwise things were fine. I'll find out better over the weekend.

Coals to Newcastle ?

Or in this case, miniature Hellingly Hospital locomotive to the real railway.

Not that there is much real railway left I'm afraid. What you see is the model perched on the road crossing at Park Road. There are several photos of the prototype engine here so when I visited Uckfield Show last year, I took the opportunity to give the model a trip out.

Actually I did feel a bit daft taking this photo but living so far from the line, I knew I might not get the chance to do this again. It was a quiet evening so the model could sit in place for a few minutes without too much danger of being run over.

Anyway, building models of extinct lines running into asylums is pretty daft so I suppose this is just one more step towards turning myself into an inmate !

Hellingly Station

With Google Streetview now covering 95% of the UK, it has suddenly become fashionable to post pictures of interesting things you can see thanks to the wonders of technology. Or at least it was about 2 weeks ago.

Since, I've been too busy working to do much actual model making recently, and never one to be in fashion, here's my effort - Hellingly Station.

The building is very well preserved and exists as a rather nice private house. When I was last there, there weren't even any major alterations to what is quite an attractive building. Were the Cuckoo line to be re-instated, there is at least one station that could be recommissioned easily enough.

The Hospital line ran off to the left from almost exactly the middle of the photo. It curved away sharply before heading into the hospital grounds.

See the image in Streetview.

Sadly, the hospital itself isn't covered as the roads are mostly private and thus denied to the Google mobile. Shame really as when the pictures were taken the building was mostly intact but are now largely rubble.

My Hellingly Hospital Railway layout.

Uckfield Model Railway Exhibition 2009

Before writing this post I thought I'd re-read last years entry on the show. When I did I realised that I'd pretty much need to say the same thing again this year.

First up, the quality of the show was excellent. Not just good, but really excellent. The layouts were great and so was the trade, some of my expenses were quickly exchanged for a diesel railcar kit that I couldn't resist and New Eileen helpfully lightened my wallet too.

The crowds were pretty good and they stayed all day. Saturday morning was packed as expected but even Sunday afternoon was well attended. I understand that the treasurer is happy, or at least as happy as treasurers ever are ! Things were very chatty, which was to be expected since we had a prototype 10 miles away from the show. Several people knew the line very well and I've been offered more information on the line. We were both pretty hoarse by the end which can only mean we've had a good time.

Our accommodation was different from last year but very nice. A huge comfortable room with en-suite was accompanied by a fulsome breakfast. If I'm being picky, the bacon was a bit pale for my taste on Saturday but Sunday saw this swapped it for an extra sausage making for a satisfied full tum.

We were looked after extremely well. Tea was delivered every 7.5 minutes on Saturday (slightly less on Sunday but we still drank a gallon each) to the layout. I loved the lunch which featured the best banoffee pie I've ever eaten. Not being a fan of lasagna (his loss), my Dad made other arrangements on Sunday and on noticing that the ticket hadn't been used, someone took the time to check all was OK (it was) which just shows superb attention to detail and care.

Saturday 's social was good fun. The venue was more spacious than last year and the food and company were excellent. The quiz, still being written at 1am that morning apparently, was good fun too. The picture round of identifying famous places from Google Earth shots was very clever. Eurodisney completely fooled us all.

Basically, it was good. If you get the chance to visit, do so. If you are really lucky and get the chance to exhibit, jump at it.

A slightly patchy set of photos of the show, with comments.

Michael's Blog which tells you more about the layouts.

Wheel cleaning

Wheel cleaning
Originally uploaded by Phil_Parker

Part of my preparations for any exhibition is a wheel cleaning session a few days before we pack up. I'll admit I quite enjoy this bit - stick all the locos upside down in the trusty Peco cradle, give them a dose of 12V and shine the treads up with a fibre pen. Whirling wheels and disappearing dirt is fun. Useful too as the last thing you need after a long drive is running problems caused by poor electrical pick-up.

The session will also show up any issues with the locos themselves. Luckily they all seem to be behaving themselves, at least when inverted !

The only problem is one that is unique to the Hospital stick, slow running. On a layout the locos fitted with 108:1 gearboxes are wonderful. They drift around the track and take ages to go from one end of our short boards to the other. When cleaning though, what you want is whirling wheels and yet even on full power they rotate sedately and thus take 3 times as long to clean !

Every silver lining has a cloud, as they say...

Wonkiness

hospital square
Originally uploaded by Phil_Parker

Ever since I built the Hospital railway, the fiddle yards on the ends of the baseboard have been wonky. As you can see from the photo, they slope down around 10mm over their length. Wagons roll to the outer ends on their own.

Worse though is that the front looks wobbly. The front walls don't line up nicely with the edges of the scenic area and ruins the nice tidy finish I've always wanted. Part of the problem is that in order to fit the boards in VW Beetle (proper one, not your new fangled funny bodied Golf) the fronts were hinged so that the boards could be screwed together into a small box.

With the Beetle off the road and bigger cars in use, there is no need for the folding fiddle yard front, It's fallen to bits anyway. So it's being replaced with some nice bits of 6mm plywood. Being solid, they can be fitted with furniture joining blocks so the tops can be secured to the top of the main baseboard.

Result: Well the square still isn't quite, but it's a whole lot better. From the front the display looks nicer too.

How tall should a layout be ?

Hellingly Hospital Railway Leg
Originally uploaded by Phil_Parker

In preparation for a trip to Uckfield model railway exhibition next weekend, the layout has been dragged out of storage and we've been looking at a few repairs and improvements.

As part of this, serious consideration has been given to making a new set of lags for the layout. The current ones are spindly and a bit fragile but they seem to work when not being patched up. Future layouts though will be getting something a bit more sturdy.

Which raises a question - how tall should a model railway layout be ?

The Hospital is about 95cm (37 inches) off the floor. I think the others we've built are similar. Reading the latest issue of Narrow Gauge and Short Line Gazette, one of the contributors home based layout is a whopping 132cm (52 inches) high - that's taller than the worktop I have for layout building 111cm (44 inches). The later is tall enough to cover a hot water tank and also put the model at a pleasant height for me to work at.

Now at 6ft 3 (190cm) I'm taller than average (5ft 9ins or 175cm) but not by much. Standing in the pub there aren't many people shorter than me. To view a model I prefer it to be at a height that doesn't require me to bend down too much. Aside from being uncomfortable, if I bend I stick out into the aisle of the show and take up more than my fair share of floor space !

Of course I could just built layouts for me but since they are intended to be for exhibition use, consideration has to be given to the best height for display for as many people as possible. Working on the average height then I'm not too far off - short enough for most but tall enough that most people don't see a helicopter view. And I operate standing up so as to be level with visitors for answering questions and chatting.

However there are two groups of people who are special cases:

Those in wheelchairs. My eye line sitting down is 129cm (51 inches) but then as I said, I'm tall. Even allowing for this I think the wheelchair view is slightly above eye level and ought to be very acceptable.

The other group are children. These come in all shapes and sizes. Some would argue that we should make every effort to cater for them with all models at table top height or below. I differ - my models are built for grown-ups. Most kids are bored stiff watching small locomotives shunt back and forth slowly. I also don't see that the world should be entirely organised around the ankle-biters. Finescale model railways are something you aspire too, not toys. By the time children are tall enough to appreciate them, they are tall enough (naturally or with the aid of the ever popular step stool) to see them.

Of course, whatever I do, I can still be thwarted by the barriers put around the models. If the crosspiece falls at eye level for your layout, it poses a dilemma - block the view or risk operating without crowd protection.

These are my thoughts but I know this is a contentious issue and would love to gain some more opinions, please stick something in the comments box.

Terrier

Just a short post as I'm too busy and too tired to get a lot of modelling done in the evenings at present. Normal service will be resumed next week.

In the meantime, feast your eyes on this - an emergency locomotive.

Emergency locomotives are the one that live in the stockbox at exhibitions but rarely make an appearance on the layout. When they do, it's an indication that everything else has failed and it's time to reach for the lifebelt !

The Terrier is a Hornby, ex-Dapol model that I use occasionally on The Hellingly Hospital Railway. As supplied it was painted in the correct livery for the era the layout is set in but I'll admit that the prototype engine never actually traversed the line. In fact this one doesn't as the wheelbase is quite long for such a small engine and it struggles a bit around the model curves. However it does allow me to keep something moving if all the "proper" locos are giving me grief.

To be honest, my OO layouts don't need emergency power as I've got plenty to models that will keep plodding along for a whole show. I think I was probably there when I bough this one, but it is such a lovely colour and so well painted, it seemed a shame to resist. The West Midlands name also appealed although I'd have preferred Stepney thanks to a childhood where I read (note read, not watched on telly) Rev Awdry's books.

The model took more work than I had expected. The pipes coming out of the side of the boiler are rather horribly moulded in and had to be scraped off for replacement with whitemetal versions. The smokebox dart was replaced with a Romford brass version and I suspect the Westinghouse pump is Gibson. A bit of weathering to hide the touched up boiler paintwork and the model looks the part.

Hospital Tramways and Railways

While at Warley last weekend I had the latest copy of "Hospital Tramways and Railways " by David Voice thrust under my nose. This is the third edition which has features many extra lines including the military camp on the Isle of Man. I must admit that I was sorely tempted to update my first edition to this latest hardback version.

Of course the best bit is the photo of my model of the Hellingly Hospital Railway in the appropriate section.

Find the book on Amazon here.