A Bowaters Layout

In my last post I mentioned I'd got a book on the Bowaters railway of Sittingbourne, inspired by my friend Rob who plans to model this line in 009. I've been looking through the pictures and soaking up the atmosphere of this characterful line, I knew little of it before but now I can see why Rob has been inspired to capture the system in model form.

Now Rob has started his own Blog to chronicle the planning and building of his model. Although he had ideas of a large layout of the whole system in his garage, he has now decided to start small and build a series of modules, and has a plan for the first one. Each can be a complete, operational, and exhibitable layout in it's own right, but together a picture of the whole system will be built up. I think this is a great idea as like me, Rob has work and family commitments for his time, but the modular approach means a completed layout will be achieved sooner. Also the models will not claim to be accurate renditions of exact spots - without a lot of space and time that would be impossible - but will aim to capture recognisable features and the character of the locations. I can't wait to see this layout progress!

If you have enjoyed seeing Rob's work with an airbrush and paintbrush, he has set up another Blog to showcase his talents in this area, and is open to commissions for both painting and kit-building.

Christmas

I hope you all had a good Christmas! Mine involved a long drive to my parents, seeing friends and family, enjoying time with the kids, a tummy bug, and now a stinking cold. Pretty typical really! Nonetheless, at least I have some time off work. So what did Santa bring? Well, nothing big this year, but I did get some interesting reading:

I've rather enjoyed Paul A Lunn's series of articles in Railway Modeller proposing micro-layouts, obviously enjoying micro-layouts myself I was pleased to get his book on the subject. It contains a selection of ideas similar to the articles in RM, with some attractively illustrated plans. To my mind many of the plans verge on the gimicky, with extremely short trains (30cm in OO gauge?!) and much use of traversers, sector plates and loco lifts in the operation of them - personally I prefer layouts with slightly more prototypical operation. Also I thought the text could have been more in-depth in places, explaining construction and operation better. However there are some great ideas, and the first section of the book gives good tips on designing small layouts.

The biggest omission to me though was Narrow Gauge - using NG is extremely popular in building micro-layouts, so it seems odd that it is not even mentioned. I guess the book is aimed at the mainstream, RTR-using modeller (all plans use OO scale), but scales such as 009 and O-16.5 are established and popular and given the subject of the book I think they should at least have been suggested.

This is another book of plans by Iain Rice, and those that have read his other books on the subject will find no surprises here, just lots of great ideas for layouts in a variety of spaces, all with good scenic and operational potential, and well-illustrated and explained. Some may not like his style, and not all his ideas will suit, but his approach to layout design has inspired me over the years. And yes, there is even a narrow-gauge plan!

A friend of mine is a big fan of the Sittingbourne 2'6" gauge railway and is planning a layout based on the Bowaters Paper Mill. I know very little about this system so when I saw this book by David Hammersley at EXPO-NG I had to get a copy (although the elves came and took it away so Santa could deliver it!). As the name suggests it is packed full of photo's, showing the atmosphere and detail of this industrial narrow-gauge empire, with a number of colour photos too. The captions are informative as is the brief introduction to the line, overall a great book for the narrow-gauge and/or industrial railway enthusiast, and for any modeller!

Wishing you all a Happy New Year, and hoping for some more productive modelling!

Steam without Fire?

No, this isn't my work! Last Friday I made it to a Sussex Downs 009 Group club night, where my friend Rob Kaczmarczyk was showing off (and test-running) his latest work. It's a model of a fireless loco, if you are not familiar with them (they were pretty rare) they had a large tank of high-pressure steam which was charged from a fixed supply (e.g. a factory boiler), allowing it to run for several hours. The lack of fire meant no smoke or sparks, useful for working into buildings and not setting fire to things!

This model is of a loco that worked the Bowaters Paper Railway, now known as the Sittingbourne and Kemsley Light Railway and has a preservation society. Rob is keen to build a model based on this system when it was still industrial, and capture the run-down atmosphere. Like me he is limited by family and work commitments right now, but we were chatting about possible micro-layouts in the meantime!

As you can see from this model Rob has a gift for painting and weathering, which I can only admire! The model was not fully assembled after painting (so if the cab and hand-rails look wonky that's why), and these photo's were taken on my phone so are pretty poor (the green is not quite that lurid in reality!), but even so Rob's skill at capturing that dirty, workaday, wiped-with-an-oily-rag look can be seen. I should also point out that Rob has done a lot of work to the original kit to achieve the detailed model seen here.

Next time I need a model loco painting I think I'll be talking nicely to Rob!