The Festival of British Railway Modelling: A Highlights Reel

Choosing a favourite...  who knew that a task that sounds so natural to do becomes a torturous, self-flagellating exercise in choice?  Perhaps this is why those whohave recently fallen under a dictatorship chant “we are free from freedom!”

Of all the BRM shows, the Doncastrian event has a distinctly British flavour (with the horrendous grease thankfully remaining in our nation's food); they say that when you participate in a Smorgasbord, you leave hungry; and with that in mind, Tawe TMD brings you it's top 5 picks from the show.  When you consider that the TMD is focussed on railway modelling, the funny thing is how my favourite layout of the show celebrates the simple trainset:

1. Newbie Bridge

Setrack all around, not a gradient in sight; yep, it's a trainset all right!

No gradients doesn't always mean no verticality :)

A train made up of trainset product placements?  How do I know I'm not in childhood again?

Metcalfe Buildings look damn good considering they are made of printed card.

Newbie Bridge seems to be everything amateur condensed into a small room – all that's missing are the standard hornby controllers!  But look closer, what is the objective of our hobby?  Why do we put months and months into incredibly thorough research and construction, in between our jobs and social lives, mind, to put some plastic things on a table?  Why, to capture the spirit of railway life in that region at that time!  We fuss and fuss over grains of dirt on the springs of our wagons, to condense the atmosphere of life onto an 8x4.  Why can't we do this with the essence of a trainset?  Arguably the number one fixture in our childhood homes that propels us into the hobby to begin with.

Here's to Newbie Bridge, for showing us that sacrificing atmospheric charm to the altar of realism does not a great layout make.

2. Stoney Lane Depot

And now back to reality!  Or at least, with us at 144:1 Scale!

Did I tell you I have a soft spot for 3^rd rail?

Flapper Board Clocks win an instant gold star ;)

If OO gauge 3^rd rail uses Z gauge Code 60, what on earth does N gauge use?

Jaffa Cake :D

Takes me right back to my childhood, this; riding the 'Greyhound' units to the then-new Eurostar terminal at Waterloo to go to Disneyland.  The 4-CIGs, 4-VEPs and other Slam-Door units always reminded me of a rake of redundant carriages with motors jammed in and cabs stuck to the ends; recycling at it's finest.  Major kudos goes the the fine 3^rd rail work, makes you wonder how much effort would go into a similarly fine catenary system, especially one that transmitted power!  The thing that nudges it into 2^nd place for me is the Flapper Board Clock, and with that I've shown my cards – Nostalgia, plain and simple.

3. Penpoll Quay

In the sea of greys, browns, blacks and greens that makes up pretty much all of the steam layout pallette, the brilliantly subdued white of China Clay is always a pleasing sight.  O gauge is gaining major traction in the hobby since RTR manufacturers began to inject the market with affordable, robust, highly detailed models.  The main attraction?  Pick up an O gauge model of any kind and you'll feel why, there's an immediate sense of weight and presence with these models that often makes up for a lower overall detail level!

Speaking of detail, the same size wires and powders for OO or even N make much finer additions to O gauge models, and with China Clay being a notoriously obnoxious commodity that lodged into crevices in anything that isn't mirror-smooth, hence the spectral appearance of any wagon that ever carried the stuff, this has never held more true.

Cornwall was certainly Pannier and Prairie territory, away from the main lines, at least.

I bet this sight at night frightened many ramblers!

If you want a layout to stand out, a specialist freight operation is a sure-fire winner, even more so if there are working mechanical functions...  Now that I think about that, what's to say you can't transport household commodities by model railway?  Perhaps we could have a Coffee train with insulated hot water tankers, followed by milk tanks, coffee hoppers and sugar cubes on a flatbed?  Just something to consider...

4. Oldham King Street

That class 40 looks like it has four eyes.

The Blue Diesel Era; a time of corporatisation, dieselisation, and bastardisation (Checkout the aesthetic debauchery on this 5-BEL. Ghastly.).  Thankfully we are spared the cold sight of blue and white on an ornate, classily-appointed train and are instead treated to some more humble machines.

Gronk does Gronky things...

A 33 passes a Derby Unit by with a few CCTs

The leviathan character of the Class 40 is captured superbly with this voluminous clag and laborious acceleration.

It seems strange to see such large machines on such small layouts other than Motive Power Depots, but they can add that crucial dash of immersion by implying a greater world outside of the track on which they reside.  Not everyone can make a Leamington Spa, but that doesn't mean you can't make a nod to a larger network, just as long as there is a suitable justification for the interloper being there; we can all thank Oldham King Street for showing us that.

5. Three Mills

This one wins 5^th place, if only for this notice:

“Cinders and Ashes!” cried Thomas, “That's morbid!”

Aside from the crude-oil humour and obvious pun, there doesn't seem to be much to this layout, but let me tell you this – I thought it was OO when I first saw it!

It even looks like OO now, trust me, you have to get close to notice it!

Classic Control Panel :D

Just in case you were still in doubt as to whether this really was Fine Scale 3mm.

If anything this layout made the top 5 due to it's scale, if it were just another OO or N layout it would be a fairly standard branch line terminus; sometimes a fresh gauge all you need.  The fine scales require a lot of work – building your own track, re-gauging rolling stock and locos, and generally pulling yourself up by your bootstraps.  In layouts such as this you can see the grease and effort put in, as the rolling stock and track takes on a hand-built, more organic form which injection moulding and CNC cannot replicate.

Closing Words

I chose this selection from the layouts I observed, that being pretty much everything on the ground floor; before I fail to mention it, I'd like to express my humblest apologies to the people behind Border's Reach, Minories, Bankfield Road and Imperial Yard.  Sunday train services meant I was short of time, and I only had, at most, 3 hours to explore and take photos of the stuff I fancied, and in an embarrassing twist of busyness, I neglected to explore the food court.  Hopefully some of you'll be at the London Festival of Railway Modelling, I'm pretty much certain to be there given that my good friend Matt Wickham of Bluebell Model Railway will be present.

I have to say that taking the trouble to travel by train on Sunday to a city I've never been in has been well worth it for me.  The Doncaster Racecourse venue proved smaller than anticipated, but still more than enough to provide a plethora of fantastic displays, as well as some innovative trade stands.  I am awfully disappointed with myself for not allowing more time, even an hour would have let me explore the food court and perhaps squeezed a video in!  Fear not, for I only live 1½ hours away from Alexandra Palace, so let these unfulfilled desires be avenged!

SLA 3D Printer Project Log 13: Paint with the colours of the Wickes

Oh dear...  It had to be crossed eventually...  This is a skillset I'll freely admit I have dishonourably neglected...  Painting.

For someone who is in a hobby all about making faithful recreations where razor-sharp details abound, I need some serious work on this skill, and what better place to begin than on a project that technically doesn't even require painting if the printer is kept indoors?  My original plan was to hang up the panels, spray them glorious, and have done with it; so far, it seems to be going well:

Apart from it resembling a grey-scale map of German Mottled Camouflage; economy or consistency?  The agony of choice...

I'm greatly enthused by the idea of spray-painting, if not because it's the only way my gibbon hands can get a decent coat down, it also has these goodies:

1.  More rapid application, also dries faster
2.  Cleaner in application, also leaves the work surface free from ghastly lumps of paint
3. Thinner coat means paint is less liable to be chipped off
4. Greater consistency is achievable with lower skill level
5. Minimal equipment is required – I probably should have hung the panels up with a wire but this isn't strictly necessary

All promising stuff, but alas it is tempered by these here bugbears:

1. Terrible with thin edges – you can either underspray the edge or overspray the sides, unless you have an adjustable airbrush or a spray can with multiple nozzles
2. Expensive per area covered – Standard outdoor paint cans promise 10m^2 per can while you'd be lucky to get 5m^2 out of the same money spent on spray paint
3. Solvents released to atmosphere, requires a well-ventilated area (or a shed full of panel gaps!)

Just to illustrate point 1, I have evidence of both cases, as if that's something to be proud of!

What is this “consistency” you speak of?  Do you think it'll ever catch on?

For the sake of comparison, by the way, I painted the rear panel with outdoor white satin paint (sans primer for speed reasons); am I so stoked by these results?  Short answer, no.  Long answer, very much no.

Too embarrassed to paint my Airfix models as a child, can you tell?

The worst part about such blobby edges is the fact that less is more when painting; specifically, the blobs are always the first paint to chip off.

The black lines are brush bristles, go me.

The coat does look thicker at least; don't worry, I was planning to drill the holes out from 4mm to 5mm anyway :)

Enough depressing spectacles of incompetence, here's a beautiful image of what happens when you immerse a stainless steel offcut rod (used as a paint stirrer) bathe in a tub of water and eco-turps:

Keep your skills high and your pomposity low...