Andrew Barclay

A new arrival, a fine Andrew Barclay model from Hattons. I'm not really up to speed with recent RTR releases, but I am really impressed with the detailing of this model - I'm talking brake rods, sand pipes, brake shoes that look like they are touching the wheels, super fine handrails.



And although rather tricky to photograph, the cab interior looks like you could get in and drive it (if you were 76 times smaller). Oh, and the buffers are actually sprung. It runs well too, although I've only tried it on my son's train-set. It could have been geared a little slower being an industrial shunter, but it ran smoothly down to low speeds.



Now, I seem to have accidentally started a collection of industrial locos in OO. Oh dear...

Wagons Roll

Sorry about the rather predictable title, but this week I have mostly been building wagons. Here is the total fleet so far, although I do have some more flat wagons and a fuel bowser wagon set to make up.

These KBScale wagons are all based on prototypes made by Hudson using the "Rugga" skip chassis. Most industrial lines bought their wagons "off the peg" from Hudson or one of the other manufacturers of similar equipment, rather than have bespoke-design wagons made as many of the better known narrow gauge lines did. The kits are nicely detailed and not at all difficult to assemble, although like any kit they do benefit from a little time and attention.

Although I haven't yet made enough couplings, all the wagons are prepared and ready to have them fitted, as previously described. So they are just about ready for painting, but first I will distress the deck of the flat wagon a little, and I need to find a way of making those skip bodies look battered and used. I've heard of people using a blow-torch to soften the thin plastic but even if I had one, I'd be sure to melt or burn the plastic instead!

Here we go again!

I mentioned in my post about EXPONG last October that the challenge for 2011 sounded interesting, it is to build a layout in a boxfile. The trouble is I have a weakness for this kind of thing, just look at Southon Yard and Pen-Y-Bryn Quarry - you could say I have "History". It didn't help that even my wife thought it sounded interesting, and for the next few weeks I was doodling ideas.

The "Dave Brewer Memorial Challenge" is detailed on the EXPONG website, however the rules are pretty straightforward. The model (narrow gauge of course) is to be built into a boxfile such that the lid can be closed, and "sticks" of track (or "cassettes") may be added to one end to facilitate operation.

I thought I'd like to do a 2' gauge industrial railway, the sort with small internal-combustion locos and skip wagons (or variants built on their frames). This is tricky in 009, but there tempting me at EXPO was the KBScale stand. As I have mentioned I have long admired the Roy C Link range of industrial 2' gauge models in 7mm scale, 14mm gauge (now in the KBScale range), and the boxfile seemed an ideal opportunity for a mini-project to dip a toe into the waters of a different scale. However I must confess I do enjoy designing and building micro layouts too, and the deadline and silly limitations of the boxfile (let's fact it, it is a daft idea) is good fun.

Now I happened accross an empty boxfile (well it is now), and so out came some track templates (photocopied from the Link manual) to see what could fit. This sort of layout is best planned full-size, it's the only real way of knowing what will fit, however I did find a novel way of "drawing" them. I photographed the paper template plan with my mobile phone, then used an "App" to doodle all over them; here are a couple of ideas I came up with.

The first uses the boxfile as the inside of a factory, with tracks entering through a door, and some dirty windows looking out to grey sky along the back - kind of a reverse of the normal approach! Sidings inside the building could serve a boiler-house, a door through to "Goods Inwards", and a loading area. Battery loco's might suit this best, so a short kick-back to a charging/servicing point has been squeezed in.

This idea is for a railway serving a nursery (the kind that grows plants, not Kindergarten), and yes there is a prototype for this at Poppleton near York. In this concept the greenhouses are served by tracks (O.K. they are only one wagon deep in reality) for taking fertiliser in, and plants out, while next door there is a store, and boiler-house requiring coal. The tracks exit left though a gate in a tall wall to another part of the nursery.

Next time I'll reveal the plan I chose ... and it is neither of these!

A deviaton of gauge!

Hmm, I seem to have acquired an out-of-gauge wagon ...!

It is from KBScale, previously the Roy C Link range of industrial narrow gauge products in 0-14. Each time I walked past the KBScale stand at EXPO-NG I found it harder to resist, and ended up picking up a trial set of wagon and a length of track. This is the same kit that Phil Parker described on his blog a little while back.

The truth is that I have long admired the Roy Link range, I dusted off my Industrial Narrow Gauge Manual and found the invoice for it tucked inside ... from 1995! But 0-14 is very much a specialist scale, there is nothing ready-to-run, not even track, although KBScale make some track parts. As someone who has never made my own track (although I did make up some quarry track in 009 once, it was never operational), and uses commercial chassis, this would seem and odd choice of scale.

But there is something appealing about tiny industrial trains, skip wagons, internal combustion locos that look like they were made in a shed (and often were), a very purposeful and no-frills approach to railways. And while Nigel Lawton has shown that these can be modelled in 009, since I am clearly no watch-maker, and part of the point of modelling such an industrial railway is including the detail, to me 0-14 is the obvious scale.

So does this represent a change in modelling direction? No, probably not. But a new project? Well, watch this space ...