Back to the 70's

This isn't a proper serious post. In fact, feel free to go out and do some bank holiday stuff if you want, the sun is shining and you have the day off after all.

In the meantime I am celebrating 1973.

This is R455, Hornby's Industrial Tank engine introduced in that year. Collectors will note that is is based on the same moulding as the legendary "Nellie" first released in 1962. By the 70's you could also buy it as Connie (2 colours) and Polly as well as this unnamed version.

I remember looking at this little loco in a Hornby catalogue when a child. It must have been an out of date catalogue as even I'm not that old. It stuck in my mind for some reason, probably the shiny dome to be honest, so when digging through eBay a week ago looking for something else, I stuck a tiny bid on it. For less than a tenner including postage, I am the proud owner of a little red engine in surprisingly good condition. The chrome is good, something that any classic car owner knows is important, and the only blemish is a little paint rub in the smokebox handle. I'll touch this in with some satin black and no one will ever know. Incidentally, how do you chrome plastic ?

Actually, at the price this loco has only deperiated very little over the years. Originally sold at £3.53, I still had to cough up £3.25 and I didn't even get a box, just the plastic inner tray. Mind you when I was a kid, that was still rather more than young Phil's pocket money would have run to. Of course I can make up for this now I am a grown-up and can buy the toy trains I want. Well, sort of anyway.

Of course, now I have the thing I've got to work out what to do with it. I do have quite a Triang collection but that's mostly made up for operating accessories (9 Giraffe cars and counting !) so it doesn't really fit in. Perhaps I could get some contemporary wagons and make yet another micro layout up for it. Maybe use appropriate aged buildings.

Or perhaps put some Romfords in, slap some Spratt & Winkles on the ends and use it to anoy finescale modellers ?

For more information, visit the Hornby Railway Collectors Guide website.

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.

Model boats in the shopping centre

So why did we chose Saturday, the hottest day of the year so far, to spend inside a great big greenhouse ?

Because we love our hobby and want to introduce more people to it that's why. And we didn't know it would be the hottest day of the year so far.

The plan went well* - on Friday night a load of tables borrowed from work were assembled at one end of the Royal Priors Shopping centre. Handily by JJB spots and the ladies floor of M&S to provide a waiting point for bored husbands, it was the spot the centre management had allocated for us. It's probably the one that can least easily sell to commercial concerns too being the other end of the building from the entrance, but that is fair enough since we didn't have to hand over any cash for it.

Empty of boats the display space looked huge. After the Warwick event, we knew we could put on a good show but we'd planned for an extra 8 feet of frontage. Despite this we were confident and the next morning proved to be right. Over 30 models of all shapes and sizes filled the tables. Everything from RTR fishing boats to a huge live steam Mississippi paddle steamer turned up. In the centre we put a big lifeboat along with a collecting box for the RNLI.

The day started slowly, that good weather deterred the crowds who decided that sitting in the local park was a better way to spend the time. Happily though the shopping centre cooling systems worked well and despite being warm, the temperature never became unbearable.

Those people we did talk to seemed genuinely interested. We were promoting our open day on the 6th June and hoping that we could increase membership by a couple of people. Most of the visitors had never seen anything quite like the display on offer. "Who makes these ?" was one of the most common questions followed by complete surprise when we said that we had.

A few potential members did appear. When someone casually asks if all the models "are RC" then you know you are onto a winner. No one who isn't a bit of a modeller would say this and after a chat to a man who built static models I handed over the leaflets with the hope he'd come down and see what we were up to. That's stage 2 - get them down to have a sail with someones boat and meet club members for some laughs. After that they are hooked and the decent into a world of fibreglass hulls and waterline worries is assured.

*Apart from getting stuck in a cargo lift for 5 minutes but the staff quickly got things working again. Who knew you could get a mobile signal from in one of those ?

Fitting magnets

There are two ways of fitting Spratt & Winkle magnets to a model railway layout. This one, or the way I normally do it.

On the layout in a box, as I know where the track will be in advance, I've simple cut a rectangular hole with a big Stanley type knife (this one is from Wilkinson and features an automatic blade replacement system that is very ingenious - I keep fiddling with it and have to re-load the knife) going through both the cork and into the ply top.

Then, using a chisel type Exacto blade, the wood layers have been peeled away until the magnet sits just under the surface of the cork. A dollop of PVA holds it in place. Using proper S&W magnets allows for a small hole. Cheaper versions aren't as powerful so you have to hack away much more.

And the way I normally do this ? The same basically except that the track is usually laid so I have to use a slitting disk in a mini drill to cut the sleeper centres away first. These usually peel off and can be glued back later. It's another reason for using genuine magnets - they will comfortably fit between the rails in OO gauge.

Uncoupling positioning

Before I start fitting uncoupling magnets to the railway layout in a box, I have to work out where they need to be. To do this the track has been plonked back into place, making sure the point tie bars are over the holes, and then marked out again so I put it back in the same place later.

On a micro layout you need to eek out all the siding space you can so I've been going around pushing wagons along converging tracks to see how close to the point they can be before clobbering each other. Then I mark the ends of the buffers on the board - with Spratt & Winkle uncoupling, this is the point you want the centre of the magnet. Only short wheelbase wagons will be appearing - if you plan on using bogie or particually long wheebase stock including diesels, allow half a wagon length of extra clearance so vehicles can pass without endangering fragile side detail.

On a larger model it's also worth measuring out the distance between magnets to that in a long train only one coupling is over a magnet at a time. This is fine until you introduce the odd long wheelbase vehicle when all bets are off and you can find a train splitting in two places at once. Electromagnet would solve this but I can't be bothered with the extra expense and wiring.

And yes, I know that wagon has an 'orrible big Hornby tension lock on it at the moment. This will be changed eventually, it was just the only one I had to hand...

Printable silk

At the Mobile Marine Models open day I picked up a sheet of printable silk from Barry's Model Lettering. It's A4 sized and the material is backed with paper to make it run through the printer easily. Once printed this is peeled off leaving just a silk sheet. The sheet cost £2.60. Cotton, linen and vinyl are also available.

The photo shows a cruel close up of the silk side. The weave is a lot finer than it appear here. Also the camera and lighting combination have conspired to make the pure white look a bit yellow and blotchy.

My next job is to work out what to do with this stuff. Barry intendeds it to be used for model boat flags. That's a nice idea as you can make a unique pendant or club flag to hang on your vessel. The makers shows something involving a cot on the instructions. My first thought is 7mm scale wagon tarpaulins. Although these are available, I wonder if the finished on a home printed one would be a bit more realistically course than the paper versions. You could even chop it up and glue the results together to represent the sheets of material that make up the real thing.

For the moment though, this goes into the pile of solutions awaiting problems. I just hope that when the problem occurs I can still find it !

In the meantime, has anyone got any more suggestions ?

Old magnets

Digging through my stash for some magnets to operate the couplings on the layout in a box, I found these.

I’ve no idea how old they are but looking at the photocopied header card with text that owes nothing to a computer and everything to letter stencil sets, I’ll take a guess at early 1980’s. They are even described as “Sprat & Winkle Line” coupling magnets after the railway to Redbridge modelled many years ago by Derek Munday, the inventor of the couplings. Best of all, the price for a pack is only 75p instead of todays £4.

How things change. Nowadays you wouldn’t think of producing a header card without a computer. The results will look professional but lose that homely touch that characterised cottage industry suppliers quarter of a century (yes, I know, it is a long time isn’t it) ago. I suppose this is progress but you have to wonder if we aren’t losing touch with our roots a bit. I mean, when these were new, modellers would happily take some RTR, chop it up and throw chunks away to make a model that would now be surpassed in quality by average out of the box products today. We moaned that Johnny foreigner had better goodies on the model shop shelf but the craft based hobby in the UK compensated for this with all sorts of odds and sods (most of which seem to be in my cupboard actually) to assist our efforts. The end results had, like this packet, character.

Of course the magnets will still work fine. For reasons I don’t understand, permanent ones never wear out. I’ve even dug them out of old layouts to re-use them in the past. A little bit of history buried in the ballast.

Cork base

Sidings and yards on the real railway aren't known as homes of perfect ballasting with nicely formed shoulders. Most were second hand rails on old sleepers held in a bed of rubbish. There would be some granite in there perhaps but also a lot of ash and dirt.

Despite this I've laid some 2mm thick cork on the baseboard top. Its stuck down with PVA glue but only where the track is. I filled the gap between the lines mentioned yesterday and smeared it around with an old RAC member card. Then the cork was rolled out on top and weighed down with piles of magazines. At last a real use for them !

One dry I've opened up the point motor holes using a sharp knife. The rest can stay until I've progressed further. My thoughts are at the moment that there will be a bit of a shoulder in some places whereas in others, around the engine shed for example, will be left solid. I'll also chop some cork to give a little ground contour.

Anorak Vision

My dream job:

Did you know that when the BBC Director General’s job comes up, it has to be advertised publicly ? The controller of Radio 4 and 7 was in the paper last weekend but that’s not the one I want, I want to run the telly.

During the interview, one of the questions I’m sure will be asked is “How will you develop the station in the future ?”

My answer will be both simple and brilliant. On day one a flunky will be sent down to the nearest big branch of WH Smith, not the one inside TV Centre, a proper one. The instruction will be to purchase one copy of every magazine on sale. Except the celebrity ones of course – we’ve got to look after the licence fee after all.

While they are out doing this, the Eastenders producers will be in hearing about the new Dalek family moving into Albert Square but that’s another story.

Eventually I will have a big boardroom full of glossy magazines. A couple of hours later many of them will be in the bin but those that remain form the kernel of my new schedule. Creative types will be invited along for a meeting and told to pull something out of the pile and make programmes based on it.

Crazy ? No. You see I know that people will watch the programmes for the simple reason that they are willing to hand over hard earned cash for the magazine. While the sales of mags won’t exactly equate to viewing figures, I reckon that you can allow 50 people viewing for free for each person who pays to read the content and those sort of numbers will be on a par with BBC 4 and even daytime on the main channels. The papers will doubtless nickname it “Anorak Vision” but it won’t matter. For a start the numbers will be on my side, and if the programmes are any good I’m building a loyal audience who will march on any government trying to depose me bearing flaming torches and pitchforks.

All this is because I think that model makers deserve some telly coverage. There is a saying in the celebrity world that if you aren’t on television, you are dead. That’s what is happening to us – if you don’t warrant some airtime then your activities are seen as odd. We are ostracised by a biased media more interested in coming up with yet another take on selling antiques at a car boot sale than doing something new. Just take a look at the number of derivative shows in the nearest listing guide and then despair when we hear how Britain is full of “creative’s” who will get us out of recession.

There have been attempts at this of course. ModelRailway TV is an internet based channel that makes its own programmes. I’m not a subscriber but those who are seem happy. Perhaps with a slight upgrade of facilities (you can make movies on digicam, so TV ought to be easy) they could be providing useful inserts for a magazine style show. A few years ago there was a DVD based version too with the ever prolific Mark Found. The content was excellent even if the presentation was a bit, erm, over-enthusiastic at times. It foundered because people wouldn’t by the DVD in sufficient quantities but the idea was there.

This wouldn’t be limited to toy trains either. What about boat modellers ? Or aeromodellers ? Or pretty much any creative hobby ?

My vision is a magazine style programme that covers both real and model subjects. Something like the BBC’s Countryfile, it will be an hour long and made up of segments with linking presenters. The format is proven for a more general audience than an initial look at the topic might suggest. After all, how many of us are involved in farming ? Despite this, we still spend a chunk of Sunday night looking at it.

There would have to be some standards. Firstly, the shows should be aimed at a general audience. Not dumbed down, but if your interest is in the variety of sandbox shapes employed by Class 31 diesels then you’ll be disappointed. To get the mix right, people who are involved in the hobby will need to be working behind the scenes. Let your average programme maker near it and they will just take the mickey out of the subject. And then I will fire them. The best TV comes from presenters and producers who have respect for the subject anyway. This is not telly for children or idiots.

Second, no “character” presenters. If you want ordinary people to watch, you need to put someone on screen that they don’t laugh at. By all means vary the mix but not every enthusiast is Fred Dibnah and very few can communicate as well as a professional. Not too much Pete Waterman either – he’s everywhere on these sort of things. Besides, there are plenty of people who want to get on the screen so we can pretty much take our pick and get good presenters.

Third, no “character” interviewees. All hobbies have crackpots and that’s what the public associate with them. If a programme is to be successful we need to get interesting people with a story to tell. The show won’t require that many finished models per year, unlike the magazines, so those that make it to screen will be the best and most inspirational. Plus the ones I’ve built but then if I’m running the BBC that’s the way it works.

None of this needs to be expensive either. We can probably get to daytime telly cheap yet the results will be usable across the schedule and thanks to the web we can pick up viewers at any time of day. Of course as soon as this all takes off, ITV will copy it hosted by Ant & Dec. Sky will launch “Sky Shed” and Dave will run the repeats. Best of all, the extra publicity will generate extra interest in hobbies. This will make everyone happier, help our cottage industries thus improving the economy and give youth something to do instead of whining that they are bored.

You’re probably thinking at this point that I am mad. None of this will ever happen. Yet in some small way it already has. Anyone remember the Top Gear race between Tornado, a Jaguar and some moped to Edinburgh ? The filing of the train was some of the best I’ve ever seen and the appreciation of the engineering by the idiot Clarkeson was genuine. No sniggering, this was something to be proud of. There’s also some antique programme on where one of the experts spent some time spraying a standard lamp electric pink, you can make stuff on grown-up telly. Mind you she was working outside with a dust mask (useless against paint spray) held over her mouth which shows the need to people who know what they are talking about to be involved.

Other than a complete absence of imagination and talent among the people who fill the goggle box, there is no reason why we should do this. That’s why I need to be running the Beeb. It’s the last hope for the country. Write to your MP and demand action now !

Mobile Marine Models open day 2010

Boat modellers don't have the advantages enjoyed by their equivalents in the railway world. Not for them the regular trips to halls full of display models and traders eager to lighten visitors wallets. Boat clubs it seems, don't organise their own shows.

Of course there are a few professionally put together events such as the International Model Boat show and very good they are too. However they are few and far between. I doubt there are a dozen significant (more than a pool and single trader) events in a year in the UK.

This may all change however as manufacturers start to take things into their own hands. Deans Marine have run an "open house" for many years. More recent is Mobile Marine Models version. As well as opening up the factory (fascinating on its own) and filling it with stuff, they also have competitor firms under canvas outside. Deans Marine, an electronics supplier, Tony Green Steam, a submarine stand, Scale Model Flags, Brian's Scale Lettering, SHG and Model Platforms Hovercraft - a pretty good selection

Sailing is limited to a small paddling pool. Club displays this year weren't exactly fulsome either. One club seemed to see it as a way for members to sell off their models - but then it saves postage over the eBay option. I wasn't tempted. Much. OK, maybe one but I stood firm and haven't added to my fleet.

On the other hand I did come away with a small stash of tools including a giant sanding stick. Some useful other goodies which will be more fully explored here are in the bag as well. Not all for nautical model making either !

A slightly creepy moment was provided by the "spot the girl" competition - visitors were invited to spot a girl from the photo on a leflet. All we had to do was ask her name and identify the stand she was on to qualify for a draw to win a £10 voucher. Maybe it's just me but I can see a few issues with this apart from the obvious one - the girl in question was pretty much the only person under 35 at the event and whoever does the leaflet needs to understand that photos look much better if you don't horizontally compress the image. MMM have always gone for a slightly odd amateurish "sex sells" policy in the adverts so I'm not surprised they have innovated in this area but the truth is they don't need this - the kits look great, the spare parts very nice and the owner really know his stuff.

Anyway, keep an eye on the website and if you fancy a trip just north of Lincoln, turn right at the giant golf ball (courtesy of the RAF radar engineers), I can recommend it.

Point motor holes

The layout in a box, like any micro project, needs careful planning. It also allows opportunities not available on larger jobs. For example, as the trackwork is a single piece, I can carry it around (carefully !) and was able to placed it on the board. Then a marker pen line was drawn around it in the manner of a murder victim in 1950's American whodunnits.

With the track out of the way again, I've been making holes for the point motor rods to poke through. These should be nice and neat and tidy but as I use moving sleeper tiebars, a little more leeway is available while still covering the hole. Actually, were I to need to be tidy,I think I'd still hack big 'oles and then cover them with accurately cut plasticard but that's by the by.

The best tool for this job is a drill saw bit. You make the initial hole with it and then move the bit sideways to turn this into a slot. I have such a bit and can I find it ? Of course not.

So, back to bodging. Drill three holes side by side and join them up with a coarse file. While chain drilling is a recognised technique (when done properly), it's fiddly to do neatly and you have to find a file of small enough diameter to go through the initial holes.

Or do what what everyone else does and waggle the normal bit from side to side, but if you are doing a lot of these, especially in thicker wood, get the right tool.

Decking

At the recent Mobile Marine Models open day (more on this later in the week) I was admiring the finish on this little cabin cruiser. Despite being based on an Aero Kits model of some vintage, it looks fantastic. Especially appealing was the finish of the deck. As manufacturers, the kit provided for nothing more than a bit of plywood - practical but hardly beautiful.

Chatting to the owner and builder, Mike Allsop, he explained how it was done. And then sold me one of his beautiful scale flags for another project.

Anyway, the method is:

• Plank the deck with individual planks made from veneer. Use spacers to keep the gaps even.
• Varnish these with Jetplac clear. Several coats will be required to seal the wood.
• Caulk with Wicks wood filler. Ideally use black or dark grey but if this isn't available, mixing some dark acrylic paint in it before use will do the job.
• Let the filler dry for around 15 minutes and then wipe off as much as possible.
• Carefully sand until the wood shows through as required.
• Finish up with several thin coats of Jetplac clear. When he says several, that finish involved at least half a dozen coats.

The results are excellent. Mike seems very keen on Jetplac, a paint I'd always ignored in DIY shops but will now try out on a future project. The varnish is unusual in that it doesn't appear to turn light colour yellow, a problem I've encountered with the otherwise excellent Ronseal yacht varnish.

3F Bulldog in Railway Modeller

More magazine coverage this month - the Bulldog makes an appearance over 4 pages in Railway Modeller. For those who read the blog postings, hopefully this pulls the story together and makes it coherent. If you read my ramblings a few weeks ago, the two make an interesting comparison.

If I'm being picky the photos of brass bits have come out a bit too yellow, possibly even golden. It seems to be a common problem and probably something I need to tweak more before submission. The shots of the finished model look OK though. The magazine has also knocked up a nice drawing of the boiler assembly that's far better than my efforts.

After I submitted the article, the editor came back with a few questions, one of which involved the resistance soldering device I use. At the time I didn't know of such a system available in the UK (mine was bought at least ten years ago from FourTrack Models) but in the news section of the mag, there is a mention of a new device just arrived in the country. The SuperChief 250 will be available from Solder Connection although it isn't on the website yet.

Railway Modeller Magazine

The Bulldog blog postings

Frog tweaking

While my Dad is happy to build the trackwork for the little model railway layout (must think of a name for it sometime), he prefers to leave the tweaking to me. He says that it's because I'm better at it. I say it's 'cos he doesn't want to spend ages rolling wagons back and forth over an inch of railway and making tiny adjustments to get the running spot on.

So, having loaded the latest arrival from Lovefilm into the DVD player at the end of the workbench (Disk 2, series 1 of Blakes 7 since you ask) I sat down to perform the dull but necessary task.

The plain track was fine of course, All (!) I had to do was put the wing and switch rails in the right place. Then move them tiny amounts until my test wagons ran through without lumping. Clever people will understand the relationships between rails that makes this stuff work. Me, I use trial, error and some handy little aluminium gauges from SMP that used to come in the point kits.

This is of course the great thing about PCB track, idiots like me can keep altering things until they work. Try that with plastic chaired track and you have a whole lot more trouble or at least molten lumps where those beautiful chairs should be. The results might not look quite as nice but if it works I'm not too fussed. The trick is to find your level.

Anyway, three points took me about two and a half hours because I wasn't working in a rush and also had time to enjoy some wobbly sets and top quality action. If I'd been in my P4 monastery then doubtless it would have been quicker and silent, but then I wouldn't have had the work of Matt Irvin to inspire me would I ?

Culvert cutting

While the track is being built, I've been hacking away at the baseboard to open up the culvert. It's a bit of an experiment really as I'm going to have to make several more holes in the top, none of which can be bodged with a bit of polyfilla either.

Work started with a Stanley knife. It made an impression on the plywood top but wasn't really going through properly even if the cut was nice and neat. I suppose I could have persevered, this and regular blade changes would have worked eventually. In the end though I used an fierce (big toothed) Exacto saw which made short work of the wood. Obviously I couldn't make cuts along the board but grabbing the wood with some pliers or levering with a screwdriver and breaking it out worked OK even if it was a touch messy.

Next a wood rasp cleaned the edges back to the sides of the wood giving a reasonably tidy gap. It's a vicious tool, and one of the few files you don't want to rub on your skin, but a great way of removing wood quickly.

Finally the sides have been tapered with the big knife. The resulting channel is somehow deeper than I expected but that's not a problem since it will be filled up a bit to produce something like a correct contour. The mess has been brushed out into the bin - well most of it anyway.

Railway modelling changed the world

It’s about time our hobby got the recognition it deserved, after all, it changed the world we live in.

To begin, a little history. The World Wide Web was invented back in the early 1990s by a scientist working at CERN in Switzerland. His name was Tim Berners-Lee. Looking for a way to share experimental data, he developed a system that allowed anyone with limited programming abilities to post hypertext documents (web pages) quickly and simply.

This system quickly took off far beyond the scientific community and now is everywhere. Without it you wouldn’t be reading this. Or selling stuff on eBay. Or watching videos of cats trying to play the piano. Or a host of other life changing activities. I and a lot of people like me, wouldn’t have the jobs we have now.

But how did a young Tim B-L get into science and computing ? I lifted this from his biography on the W3C (the people who set the technical standards for the web) website:

What did you do when you were a child ?

I grew up in south-west London. I wasn't very good at sports. When I was 11 I went to a school which was between two railway tracks, so I saw lots of trains and started train-spotting. I also had a model railway in my bedroom. It was a long thin layout with a 4-track station in the middle, and on each side pairs of tracks going off into tunnels to actually loop back to each other.

I made some electronic gadgets to control the trains. The I ended up getting more interested in electronics than trains. Later on, when I was in college I made computer out of an old television set. I bought the television from a repair shop down the road for £5 (about $7).

My mother and father were both working with the very early computers when they met. Later on, my mother taught maths in school. They taught me that maths is a lot of fun. (In England, mathematics is "maths", in the USA, "math").

When I went to Oxford University, I studied physics. I thought that science might be more practical than maths, halfway between math and electronics. In fact it turned out to be very special subject all of itself, and fascinating for all that.

To summarise. Tim liked trains. He built a model railway and then his interest developed, like that of anyone in MERG, towards the electrical side of things. From there the web was born.

If he had been into football or ballroom dancing, none of this would have happened, or at least it would have happened in a different way. Railway modelling, with its breadth of crafts and skills to be indulged in allowed him to develop an interest without really meaning to.

The rest is history.

Gauge O wagon and some O14 in Hornby Magazine

A bit of a departure for Hornby Magazine in June - I've built a Slaters kit for a 7mm scale wagon. It makes a change from the 4mm stuff and hopefully shows that the larger scales are accessible to average model makers.

I picked a pretty wagon since that's what will initially tempt people to have a go. You start with something attractive as a little bit of fun and before you know it, you're hooked and spending every penny you earn on O gauge. You have been warned.

Elsewhere, in staff projects, my O14 test track gets an airing along with a much larger than life size photograph. I mentioned a possible Groudle Glen project at the end in the vain hope someone has a Saltford Models "Polar Bear" kit they don't want.

Best of all, there is an index for the last years magazines in the back and I get my very own section ! You have no idea how stupidly pleased I am with this...

Hornby Magazine Website.

Trackbuilding

Don't tell anyone, but I'm not actually very good at building track.

I know the theory and when pushed I can do it, but my Dad is a lot better. Therefore he gets this job whenever we build a model railway. It's partly for this reason that the Hellingly Hosptial Railway was built twice. Version One had my track and didn't work properly. Version two had his and things run a whole lot better.

Anyway, the plan was shipped off to his workbench where it was pinned to a nice new sheet of softboard so soldering could commence. In an effort to make things work as well as possible all the track will be built in a single piece. The less joins the better.

While you can get away with this much easier on a micro layout, it is still possible to employ similar techniques on larger projects. Whole sections of pointwork are better built in one piece than as separate items subsequently joined up. The "flow" is better and your chances of a dry joint at a later date are much reduced.

Track planning

The next step for the layout in a box is to knock up some track. Ideally I want this built off the layout as I have ideas for fitting it that don't involve having anything nailed down too early in the process.

Three sheets of A4 paper were pinched from the printer and stuck together. Then the point templates were shuffled around to work out where the track needs to fork. To help all the Tracksettas that could be mustered were employed.

While it's not essential that the track follows accurate curves, it seemed like a good idea. The less straight track the better as far as I am concerned - on the real thing very little is straight and modellers hould follow suit. The only exception to this is in the engine shed where obviously we don't want to be emerging from the side do we ?

At this point the baseboard is looking very small. I'm sure it was bigger on the plan. Perhaps I have a supersized Airfix engine shed ?

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 ?