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Deck planks and wood suppliers
On my Dad's workbench, there is a very old Deans Marine kit for a Thames steam cruiser. A sort of posh steam powered yacht to ferry people sipping Pimms around Henley Regatta. Anyway, the main feature...
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Petrol powered shunter
I've been a busy chap recently, but sadly not with anything particularly blogable (unless you want the trials and tribulations of setting up a website using Joomla! - no, I didn't think you did) so to...
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HST rear cab
While digging for yesterdays photo, I found another fascinating shot. I manged to blag a walk through the prototype HST power car under the care of the Project Miller team. I've always been fascinated...
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Flood damage
With all the layouts and model boats and magazine projects I've acquired over the years, storage space at home has long since been exhausted. The solution my father and I decided on 8 years ago was to...
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Return of the Dock
The reason we were in the storage container yesterday is that it's time to unearth Melbridge Dock for testing as the layout is due to appear at the Leamington & Warwick MRS exhibition next...
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Fixing a dry joint
Amazingly, despite the layout's long storage, I plugged it in and every point motor tested worked straight away. Maybe the one into the front siding is a bit lazy but then it always had been - a shot...
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Mouldy
While electric woes might have been minor on the Dock, across the cobbled areas, there were little spots of what looked like mould. At first, I was tempted to pretend they were some sort of weathering...
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Barge boards and seagulls
After 25 years, even when stored on the dark, plastic sheet can become brittle. At least that's my excuse for the damaged barge board on the stone warehouse. If the plastic had been fresh, then when I...
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Two 03s
For various reasons, I'm in possession of the latest incarnation of the Bachmann Class 03 diesel. I've owned the Mainline version almost since it came out so it's interesting to compare the two. My...
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Exhibiting at Leamington this weekend
As you might have worked out from this weeks posts, I'll be spending this weekend behind Melbridge Dock and Owen's Bridge at the Leamington & Warwick MRS exhibition this weekend. There will be...
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Shunting
On Melbridge dock, a Class 01 diesel, built from a Judith Edge etched brass kit propels a shunters truck made from a long forgotten whitemetal kits. In the background is a vanwide from Parkside Dundas....
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BEN JONES ATE MY TEACAKE
You see above, a delightful limited edition Peco N gauge wagon. Only available from ModelRail Scotland last weekend, it celebrates the countries greatest contribution to culinary matters, and their...
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Updating couplings
When I build rolling stock for a magazine feature, it generally has to be fitted with a traditional tension-lock coupling. However, on my layout, I use Sprat & Winkles. With Melbridge Dock out last...
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DJH Barclay at work
The Barclay was one of my Hornby Magazine projects years ago and while it looked great, I'd never actually tested it other than a couple of trips up and down a straight test track to prove that...
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Wooden doofer
One consequence of not having taken the dock out for a few years is that it's easy to forget important bits of exhibition kit. One of these was the cable connecting a transformer to the point power....
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Clockwork Tamper in BRM
Deadlines were tight for my contributions for the latest issue of British Railway Modelling.I do my best to plan projects so they are ready well ahead of the deadline days but sometimes, events...
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Last half hour motive power
If you want to see some interesting motive power at a model railway exhibition, you need to hang on until the end of the day. While we might be oh so sensible most of the time, the last half hour is...
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It's not an automatic railway...
So there I am, operating Melbridge Dock quite happily and someone asks, "Is it automatic?"No it's not, I reply and show them the hand held controller. "Oh, I could see you changing the points but...
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Leamington 2015
An even more narcissistic post than normal today I'm afraid. At Leamington I had taken both Melbridge Dock and Owen's Bridge to display which meant very little time to look around the show. To be fair,...
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Old fashioned Moggie
Back in what we call "the good old days", if you wanted a model car, you had to build the thing yourself. None of this nipping down the local model shop for something diecast. When Melbridge Dock was...
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