Off to the NGRS

 

 

This weekend, it's the biggest garden railway show in the country - and handily, it's moved just down the road from me!

This ought to be good news. Normally I have a bit of a drive with a van-load of material to build our "Garden railway in a day" display. Sadly, the limitations of the venue mean I can't get the van in the building, never mind to the stand for loading and unloading. 

This means a much reduced garden this year as lugging half a ton of material the length of the building on my own isn't an option. Even if it was, the job would take so long I'd not have time to build the layout!

Never mind, I'll still be around to chat all things garden railways, and be really pleased to see anyone who drops by. The show looks like it will be as terrific as ever - loads to see and buy!

Full details of the show on their website.

Selly Oak lives!

 

Long term readers will remember my Selly Oak project - a commission from Rapido during lockdown, that gradually became a burden to me, rather than a joy. When I delivered it to them, and then the person whose garage it was in left the company, I assumed that would be the last anyone would see of it. 

But no! Looking in the latest newsletter, there is a Fleetline bus posed on the model. 

It seems that the layout is now safely in Kent, and should be seeing more bus action later in the year. 

Wanted: Hornby Church R599

 

Having built one of the Tri-ang "Real Estate" range, I want more. Specifically, I fancy the Hornby church that was still part of the catalogue in the 1980s and beyond. The model was R599, and I think, related to the 1963 model. 

The older kit was available with and without chimes, but these were dropped long before the more modern packaging. 

Needless to say, when I didn't want one of these, they were everywhere. You couldn't pass a second-hand stall without at least one. Now, nothing. I've searched the web to no avail. 

So, does anyone have one of these stashed away that they don't want?

Tri-ang shop in "The Collector"

 

The latest issue of the Hornby Collector's club house magazine drops through the letterbox, and in it is my contribution, a build of the Tri-ang "Real Estate" Hardware store. 

I'd never heard of the range before, until I found this kit on Cheltenham Model Centre's stand at a show. I picked it up out of curiosity, and it's sat on the shelf ever since. Then I started building retro kits for The Collector, and it seemed like an excellent subject. 

If you'd like to know more about this range, I recommend this website. It allowed me to date my kit to 1962, as the range changed name in 1963.

Having built one, I'm now on the lookout for more, so if you have anything tucked away, and don't want huge amounts of cash for it, I'd be interested. More on this tomorrow. 

 

(Cake)boxing clever

 

For work, I produce a lot of dioramas - most of which have to be stored for future show use. In the distant past, this resulted (and occasionally still does) in a shelves full of odd shaped boxes in our storage unit. 

Once the idea of the Cakebox competition came up though, I realised I could standardise on these containers for my builds. Most of the time, an 8 inch scene is big enough for the article to showcase a series of techniques. As I say to people regularily - ballasting produces three photos, whether I do six inches of sixty feet. But the later is a month's worth of work that doesn't generate enough material for an issue. That's why I build little layouts...

Anyway, with a couple of dioramas to box, I searched around Leamington town centre for cake boxes. Nothing. 

OK, online, where it turns out I can buy 10 for a tenner from The Craft Company. There is now a stack of flat-packed boxes in the office, which will gradually find themselves filled, sadly, not with cake. 

With a bit of fiddling and glue, it's easy to reduce the height of a box too, making better use of the storage space. Handy things these.