On My Workbench Archive, September - October 2008

Thursday 23rd October 2008

Lucky find!

Whilst browsing in HMV for such delights as the new Sugababes album, I stumbled accross this gem of a book about graffiti in Brighton!

A lot of my inspiration for my handpainted model graffiti comes from having observed real examples plastered around the city whilst at University, so it was amazing to actually find a book jam-packed with high quality glossy images of familiar locations and very inspirational graffiti!

It is entitled 'Brighton Graffiti' by Stuart Bagshaw & David Oates (2008) Prestel Publishing Ltd, ISBN 978-3-7913-3965-8

Although it contains mostly 'legal' Brighton & Hove council-sponsored graffiti locations, it also has a few of the more dodgy ones - including a rather sad image of one of Southern's shiny new Class 377's...ouch!

But overall it is an amazing book, well worth getting if like me, you are interested in replicating graffiti on your model railways!

On My Mp3:Sugababes - Every Heart Broken

Friday 17th October 2008

Exhibitions, two down, one to go!

Wells Green TMD has come back from the Farnham & District MRC show over the weekend of 11/12 October held at the Connaught Leisure Centre in Aldershot.

We had quite a few new things running, including my recently-completed remotoring project on the SNCF 92028 Saint Saens, which utilises Heljan class 47 parts replacing the 'Ringfield' motor in the Hornby locomotive. It is my third '92' to receive such treatment and now crawls much more smoothly over the pointwork! I couldn't resist posing all three locos in a line along the front of the layout, in a scene almost reminiscent of the real Crewe IEMD where all those Eurostar '92's were stored until recently!

Chris Sweeney came along to help out on the Saturday and very kindly agreed to drive my car to the venue seeing as I'd had a bit too much to drink the night before! He brought along a number of locomotive goodies, in the form of 37670 St Blazey and a weathered Hornby 60007 in the attractive Loadhaul livery.

On the Sunday, John Holmes and Martin Browning handled the operating, with Martin bringing along a couple of nice Bachmann class 66s too!

Sadly we couldn't play with them as after two years of usage, my Lenz Set 100 had been filled up with loco addresses, and needed emptying, as we kept getting 'Error 31' messages when attempting to put a new loco on the layout! The command station has now been cleared of addresses, hopefully it will be another couple of years before the same problem arises again!

I seem to get more and more bored at model railway exhibitions nowadays, and by Sunday lunchtime the inevitable monotony had set in, having done just about every rolling stock move that it is possible to do, and I was just ready to go home! Luckily the exhibition ended reasonably quickly and we had a very pleasant drive home through the twisty country roads in north Sussex!

The last show of 2008 takes place this Sunday in Worthing, so it will be nice to finally pack the layout away and have a fun stress-free Winter! Bye for now!

On My Mp3:Ladyhawke - Magic

Tuesday 7th October 2008

Wells Green TMD On Tour!

After many months of languishing packed away, Wells Green TMD was finally dusted down and taken out to the Croydon MRS' exhibition in Croydon last weekend. Despite being out of use for over six months, amazingly everything on the layout seemed to work alright!

Operator John Holmes brought along a few goodies to be photographed on the layout...

...including this Bachman model of EE Type 1, No. 8164, and this lovely bus, which temporarily took the place of my refuse collection vehicle!

John also brought along his Bachmann model of BR Green D3032, which frustratingly ran much better than my Hornby model of Crewe Electric Depot's shunter, the black liveried IEMD 01!

Although the exhibition had been booked years in advance, last minute social events always seem to get in the way so a huge thanks goes to Peter Denton, Mike Denwood, Martin Browning and John Holmes for operating the layout both days while I spent the weekend with someone else! Thanks!

Next weekend Wells Green TMD will be appearing at the Farnham & District MRC's show at Aldershot, so hopefully will see some of you there!

On My Mp3:Katy Perry - Hot N' Cold

Thursday 18th September 2008

Worthing MRC's Exhibition

My club, Worthing MRC, held its annual show over the weekend of 13th-14th September, which was especially good fun as it happened to be the first proper exhibition outing for the new Loftus Road layout!

Everything seemed to go very well and it was a good opportunity to show the general public what we have spent the last three years working on! As you can see there is a long way to go in terms of scenics, but it's getting there!

I have been allowed to hand-paint some of my favourite graffiti designs on various parts of Loftus Road, including some of the lineside huts, and this bridge, as shown above.

Here we can see WMRC member Martin Browning hard at work operating Loftus Road - he's that good he's going hands free!

Despite not much scenery being in place (with bare wood visible on the left hand side!) a nice selection of vehicles was placed on the layout to add life and hide the worst bits!

I love playing around with Photoshop and managed to knock up this four-foot long Loftus Road signage, decked out in Silverlink style, complete with DEMU and Worthing MRC logos!

This year the DEMU Roadshow also had a presence, where as Solent & Coastway Area Group coordinator I was left in charge of organising the stand - scary!

Using Worthing MRC's old display boards I decorated them with DEMU literature until they looked good enough, only trouble was my bodged method of using sticky tape backfired when bits started falling off during the Saturday! Pete Hollman came to the rescue with some adhesive velcro which did the job!

I chose to demonstrate weathering, whilst Pete Hollman, Chris Sweeney and Martin Browning undertook various DCC related demonstrations when not tending to other club duties! Here we can see Chris (left) and Pete (right) studying Martin's Hornby Eurostar in relation to DCC chipping it!

As I'd planned to do weathering demonstrations, I brought along a selection of Bachmann 'Limpet' wagons along, as they are always good fun! However, Martin offered me the chance to work on this Bachmann HTA bogie coal wagon instead - something a bit different!

It was the most amount of time I've spent modelling in one go since the early Spring so that was quite nice too!

On My Mp3:Bubblefish - Stars of Ibiza

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