Welcome to O9 Modeller in 2014

A Happy New Year to all who read O9 Modeller.  The header image above is to celebrate the completion of the shiftingsands.fotopic.revisited project with the addition of the final pages from 2009. Please take the time to look through the pages and re-live the 'Shifting Sands' experience.  My thanks once again to Mick Thornton for making the project possible through his archiving of the pages.

The completion of the Fotopic project has gone on alongside my dabblings with a new O9 diorama. This has had several rethinks along the way including a complete change of size and setting. Here, for the first time, is the progress so far:

As you can see, the scenario has changed to a platform-end scene. The construction of the platform is another result of my Skegness Miniature Railway researches, being based on the slab colours and pattern of that surviving at the Princess Parade end of the now closed line:

As a comparison, this is the diorama with the parts of the planned shed scene that were removed:

The line at the front would have ended abandoned and buried in the landscape, whilst the rear line would have gone into the shed structure along with the existing line.  All track is Peco with cosmetic changes including some RCL steel sleepers and fishplates.  Fencing is also Peco products.  The slabs on the platform are individual 14mm squares of mounting card, mass produced, treated with button polish to seal them and painted/weathered with acrylic paints.  A bench will occupy the front right hand corner of the scene, this is a modified product purchased in the Crab Pot model shop in Flamborough but identical to those available via eBay.  The modified version is on the left, original on the right:

I've also had the time to put together one of Roger Chivers' O9 open coach kits.  This is a plastic kit based around some existing 009 chassis parts but the body tooling is all-new.  This has gone together very well with only a little bit of work to get the floor and solebars to fit.  I have opted not to use the end-screen fitted end supplied as an option.  The main differences to the build envisaged by it's designer are the alterations to accommodate MicroTrains couplings.  More on that another time...

Colin

Pages from Fotopic - shiftingsands.fotopic.revisited

"Shifting Sands is the name of my O9 (7mm scale, 9mm gauge) railway modelling project, an attempt to model a seaside miniature railway in a compact space of 3ft x 2ft, on a modified cork notice board.... 

I have always been interested in miniature railways, which I put down to visits to Fairbourne and New Romney in my early years! The idea of modelling one has been in my head for few years now, but progress has been slow, going through several changes in track plan and locale. Things seem to be progressing now though...."

I wrote the introduction above in October 2005 on the original shiftingsands.fotopic.net website.  Regular readers of this blog will know that I started it sometime after the demise of the fotopic site as a means of showcasing new O9 projects.  I don't think that there was ever a hope of the fotopic site returning and quite frankly I wrote it off as a loss.  It would take forever to reassemble all the pages and how on earth would I know what I had written?

I then discovered that someone had been a lot more thorough than me in his recording of my work and had saved text copies of the Fotopic site pages.  Step forward Mick Thornton, well known 'roving reporter' and photographer of all things narrow gauge in model form.  From Mick's archived pages I am able to reassemble the pages, although each photo requires work to resize and edit as required.  So from a seemingly impossible task it has become simply a lengthy one.  The plan is to gradually reintroduce pages to the blog, where they will be found via the top right hand side menu, rather than as dated blog postings.

What the original site did not include was the background, planning and modelling processes I had gone through to get to the Shifting Sands concept, although bits of my thinking may have appeared on various discussion forums at the time. I have therefore added an introductory 'Path to Shifting Sands' feature to set the scene for the project.

Colin