Just Playing Trains

 Its such a rare event, so its well worth celebrating. This little gem is the smallest building in the main block of the Mill. I think its designated as building number 2 in my plan. The front elevation is done baring guttering and a downpipe. The roof needs ridge tiles. The whole complex will be weathered in one hit to keep things uniform. There's no side detail as it butts up to adjacent buildings, and the long rear sloping roof is guesswork based on one photograph. I haven't decided whether the rear face will be modelled yet, its unlikely to be visible. The shell is plasticard, faced with thin cardboard and Scalescenes textures. This combination gives me the strength and workability that I feel I need for these structures.

I have spent a lot of time working on fitting the layout into the available space, juggling the footprint to make it work. Even when you only have a tiny amount is space, this is a complex issue. My current standard is a plastic box with an internal diameter of 70 x 27 cm. My trackplan fits this box, but the Mill doesn't! Its longer to the left when looking from the railway side, which is my viewing side. So I toyed for a while with upgrading to a Chrismas Tree Storage Box, which would give 120cm of length, but only 27cm deep. To be frank, I'm still tempted. I could make the fiddle yard, and probably the pelmet for lights etc, permanent - because its so tall. I was about to write that sticking to the 70cm limit would mean I'd have to move the track plan to the right and make the first two turnouts off-scene. This would simplify the building and reduce the costs, keeping the three major constraints happy: Time, money, and space.  I’m torn, so lets leave it there while I mull...

Two-millimetre fine-scale is similar to N gauge, but 1:152 rather than 1:148 (N). This makes most things seem small, some of them very small, and some of them virtually invisible. I also model in 4mm scale and I think that my modeling brain is often stuck in this mode, because sometimes I feel like my 2mm creations are just too big, somethings just don't look right. I've been drawing and building the plastic shells for Coales Mill for a good while now, starting with pencil sketches to demarcate the various component buildings and some basic details. These are makes with letters for each gable end and numbers for each building. The basic plan ends up looking like a set of profiles that an aircraft or ship modeler may use, a technique I remember seeing, and trying, for a model TSR2 in the old Airfix Magazine back in the 70’s I guess. The central structure here, buildings 4, 5, and 6, got drawn out using a (then) free drawing tool on the iPad, and a printed template used for the p...

Welcome.  Do I really need another blog? Maybe I do, anyway here we go…. On here there will be trains, mostly model trains, big (SM32) and small (2mm FS) and others in between. Starting off with, and likely to be the early main focus of this blog, a layout currently known as Coales Mill Yard — a fledgling 2mm finescale working cameo. Inspiration — A few months back I opened a magazine for a bit of a browse, Model Railway Journal (MRJ) 150 as it happens, and was struck by that feeling — the one that you know from previous experience — that the scene in the article in front of you cannot be ignored.  This has happened before. Previously it led to a 7mm scale model of the Wantage Tramway terminus in its heyday, with baulk road made from aluminum rails and some scratch-built buildings. In this case the trigger was an article in British Railways Illustrated with pictures of the tramway disappearing between very adjacent buildings on both sides. Sadly this layout was eventually aban...