Breeding Buildings

There's not a tremendous amount to report this time.

As far as I know Himself is working through the mountain of wheel cleaning and final checks ahead of setting up at Model Rail Scotland a week from now.

Having finished my marathon casting session to restock Light Railway Stores with wagon kits, I've spend a few enjoyable evenings making up the Meltcalfe building kits my youngest received for his birthday to pep up the 'test track'.

Not only are these really well designed and solid, they are also very adaptable, and much fun can be had kit-bashing.

I've turned the 'small factory' kit into a trio of low relief buildings, slimming down the single storey unit to fit the gap between the folding baseboard and the shelf it rests on, and slicing the mill-style three storey building into two.

On the other side of the circle I've fused two arched bridge kits to create a structure which has given the Engineering Consultant kittens.

I plead Grandfather Rights.

This was all a pleasant change from the casting, but I fear I will be getting the resin out sooner than I anticipated because it appears nearly all the new stock sold out within 48 hours of delivery, which is a blessing and a curse.

That will be what I've had to get on with after we return from Model Rail Scotland.

I still can't get my head around the fact we'll be exhibiting again in 7 days time. 

It's been so long since the last show we took a layout to, because of the pandemic, and it feels strangely unreal and distant still, something that creeps up on you in a rush rather like Christmas does..

I also must confess that I am still mildly cheesed off that Bron Hebog did not merit a mention the long preview article for the show in Hornby Magazine.

It sounds a little big headed, I accept, but I would have hoped by now the layout would have enough of a reputation that it might have been included in what was quite a long list of layouts appearing at the show, especially since the editorial team at the magazine got in contact with us more than a year ago expressing an interest in featuring the layout in their publication.

Limited Clearance

There's not much to report on the narrow gauge front today.

I'm busily casting a batch of the full range of resin wagon kits for Light Railway Stores - which is going to take at least the rest of this week - and Himself is fully occupied servicing all the locos and ploughing his way through a long stretch of wheel cleaning on all the rolling stock ahead of Model Rail Scotland in a few weeks time.

In the meantime, it was my son's birthday at the weekend and among his presents were a couple of Metcalfe arched bridges which are part of the plan for the 'test track' so I've been having a little play with them to see if we can make them fit where we'd intended them to go.

OO in a confined space certainly challenges the kinematic envelope, and to position these bridges on one of the 2nd radius curves - spanning three standard gauge tracks and the narrow gauge circuit - inevitably mean's Ffestiniog-style clearances against the side walls.

There's a respectable amount of daylight when the Mark 1's pass through but the real test will be when I borrow a Mark 3 from Himself and see whether that will squeeze through...

Pegging Out

I'm always amused by how often common household objects take on a second life as handy modelling tools.

Last night I found myself raiding the washing line to use the pegs to hold together parts of the cardboard Metcalfe Models platform kit I was making up for my son's 00 side of the 'test track'.

It wasn't just the pegs.

I later stole the brass weights from the olde worlde scales in the kitchen to help keep the strengthening pieces in position while the glue dried.

These weights are regularly employed when I am resin casting to keep the clear plastic in place on top of the open mould and give the casting a nice, smooth back.

There isn't any more narrow gauge news to pass on this weekend.

Himself became separated from his magnifying visor during the week, which he left at my house after another wiring session on the test track, so small scale fiddly work was out of the question until I was able to return it to him.

A Big Relief

Wiring and control panel work wasn't the only thing happening on the 'test track' at the weekend.

While Himself was playing around with the soldering iron I set to work on another Metcalfe kit, this time for the main building of the station.

This one required quite a degree of kit-bashing because it is not to be positioned on the main part of the layout - it's too tall - but built in half relief and placed in the gap between the edge of the layout and the wall.

Given the depth of the gap it's not so much half-relief as three-quarters-relief.

When the layout is folded away this building - and half the platform - will remain in place sitting on top of the shelf which the layout rests on.  

With the layout down you should hardly notice the gap.

Well, that's the theory, anyway.

Adapting the kit was fun but made more challenging by the way the building is made up of four blocks, and each one had to be thinned by the same amount to make sure that when they were fixed together all the roof parts still connected as they should.

The front looks quite normal, as it should, and the rear - which doesn't have the windows installed because no one will ever see it - does quite a convincing turn as an abandoned post-Beeching shell.

Since these pictures were taken it's been completed with the roof and all the trimmings and I'm pretty pleased with the result.

 

Big Shed - Little Shed

The previous post was all about me building a Metcalfe loco shed kit for the 'test track' project in the modelling den.

This particular kit comes with an additional, smaller, building in a similar style which is billed as a workshop.

It occurred to me it was ripe for conversion into a wee shed for a narrow gauge loco on the 009 part of the layout - sorry - 'test track'  (almost got caught out there...).

The first decision was which of the two end walls to cut into to form the shed opening.

As printed, the workshop comes with two doors, one and the side and the other in one of the ends.

I decided that for a shed a door at the side made more sense than an end-on one, so this was where I made the cut.

The other big consideration is how to maintain the building's strength?

As designed, this comes from a solid floor which the four walls are folded around and glued to, but that wasn't an option if I wanted to use it as a running shed.

So what I did was cut out most of the middle section of the floor and add strengthening right angle sections from some of the spare card in the kit which, I hope, will keep the walls straight.

As the first picture shows, it's just about the perfect size for a small NG tank engine - no Garratts in here!

Consistency Is Key

For the last couple of modelling sessions I've been working on one of the key buildings for the test track - the standard gauge steam locomotive shed.

You probably recognised it straight away as a Melcalfe kit, and it may seem strange that someone who's made something of a fetish of scratch building should be taking the easy way out.

Primarily it's because time is of the essence.

I want to get this 'test track' done before my son gets fed up of waiting or loses interest in model railways.

Also, at lot of the stock he'll be running is getting on for 40 years-old, and some of these Metcalfe kits are arguably of a higher standard of detail!

And the final reason is that I have always believed that consistency - or uniformity, if you like - is one of the most important factors in how a layout looks.

The Metcalfe range has the advantage that we can quickly (and inexpensively) populate the layout with the full range of railway structures, and create a townscape around it, and they'll blend together nicely.

So often I've seen layouts at exhibitions - mostly ones built by clubs rather than individuals - where you'll see a some stunning stock or structures placed alongside other stuff that is nowhere near the same standard, and it sticks out like a sore thumb and spoils the effect.

On the other hand you can get a layout where there's nothing particularly outstanding, but everything is of a good, consistent standard, and the whole thing looks so much better for it.

(For those wondering, the engine shed isn't finished yet, but I won't be adding the smoke stacks, because they will come perilously close to the high limit when the layout is folded away.)