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

Seasons Greetings from O9 Modeller

Time for a quick seasonal update from the O9 Modeller camp.  Firstly, a very Merry Christmas from all at Peake Towers to readers of the blog and all fellow O9 Modellers, please do keep in touch with the latest about your own projects through 2014.

You may be wondering what has happened to the diorama concept that I have mentioned a couple of times. Well, it got a fair way into being, before those nagging doubts crept in and I had a rethink on the way it went together.  I then came to the decision that the shed really should belong on a micro layout rather than diorama, so the diorama has been reduced to something that could sit within my wall mounted display cabinet rather than in a separate display case.  It may never be completed at this rate...

On a more positive note I have completed three more pages from the old Fotopic site, bringing the 'Shifting Sands' story up the the point of the layout's first public appearance in November 2006, and detailing the construction of 'Pandora'.  To mark this point in progress, I've recycled the 2007 Christmas header from the old site!

Colin

Early in the Day II

It's been rather quiet on the blog of late, in fact I'm fairly sure that someone stole November...  Anyhow, I have made some progress with the planned diorama 'End of the Day', to the extent where there is ballasted track on a base, some painted up fencing, and this (low relief) shed building:

On my return from Skegness I had consulted with a few well known miniature railway enthusiasts about the South Parade line, which resulted in a few more photos coming my way which showed the shed in earlier days, revealing it in an unpainted concrete finish rather than the painted finish it now has.

I have had to stretch the Skegness design slightly in width to accommodate two 15" tracks and incorporated features from different eras in its life.  I've finished most of the paintwork tonight - the irony is that at the present point of time the diorama project is a bit up in the air (long story) and the eagle eyed will see that the opposite door is open to that in the diorama mock-up.  Part of me feels this might be too good for a diorama and needs to be on a layout! Hmm...

A quick description of it's construction.  A 5mm Foamcore shell, clad with cardboard for the concrete areas (including all those ribs!), pained with a mix of lightweight filler and acylic paint to get some texture, then lightly sanded back to remove some.  Wooden parts are basswood or 1mm plywood, whilst the roof is Wills 4mm scale box profile steel, cut up to give a sheet join and thinned on the lower edge.  Hinges and door furniture are scratchbuilt, whilst the fixings on the concrete panels are Grandt Line mouldings.

Oh, if anyone is wondering what has happened to the Shifting Sands pages from Fotopic - I will get back into the swing of uploading these, I promise....

Colin

Scooting over to Hull

It was good to catch up with Peter Leadley and the Clee Valley Railway today at the Hull exhibition.  Peter has described his O9 project on the NGRM Online forum and this was it's debut show.  Peter has put together an interesting collection of O9 locos, some being one-off scratchbuild's by fellow Hull club member Paul Windle.  Sadly some issues with the Windle 'Bonnie Dundee' hadn't been resolved, even the SMR's chief p-way engineer's input was sought.... Luckily though the issues with his Guest-style tender loco may have been identified, hopefully Peter can have it running on the Sunday!

Peter's has the first completed MG Models steam loco I have seen on a layout - painted in Northern Rail purple!

An overview of the layout, coaches are built from Avalon Line kits I made the masters for some time ago (just don't ask about the bogies...):

I promised Peter a visit from the SMR 'Scooter', here it proves that it, and a wagon, could fit on the turntable together:

Colin

Early in the Day

It may not have escaped your notice that there hasn't been much model railway activity recorded here of late (well, not much activity at all really). That really is because there is nothing to report, so please don't think I'm hiding the construction of a new 30ft extension to 'Shifting Sands' down in the shed ready for a big reveal in the spring - I'm not! Perhaps when I wrote the piece "The last one for now" about the last O9 wagon I had completed I somehow tempted fate?

With other distractions about the house now at a low, I have put some thought to building something.  Not minded to start a layout or item of stock, I have chosen to build a diorama in a display case that can double-up as a photographic background for O9 stock.  After a few sketches and false starts, I have composed a scene that will (for display purposes at least) accommodate my original locomotive and stock from my early days in O9. The name of the piece 'Early in the Day' reflects both this and the depiction of the start of a day's running on a miniature railway:

This use of the early stock in many ways is a result of the ongoing work I am undertaking with the uploading of the content of my old Fotopic site to the blog, if you haven't yet rediscovered this content it can be found at the top right hand corner of the page.

The overall size of the diorama will be 32 cm x 17 cm, giving plenty of depth for photography, a fault I soon found with some of my earlier dioramas:

The shed building is envisaged as something rather understated and may be inspired by a building I photographed back in the summer.  The weekend after re-acquainting myself with 'Katie' at Cleethorpes we headed back to the Lincolnshire coast for a week-long holiday in Skegness. Here is a town with a rich miniature railway history but sadly now without a line.  This shed and a nearby slabbed platform are evidence of the last 10 1/4" railway on the south promenade (and the 12 1/4" tramway that replaced it) now most of the formation was now lost under grass:

Incidentally, a walk on the seafront at Chapel St Leonards proved fruitless for a former site for a railway referred to in two articles in 'The Narrow Gauge', I discovered on my return home that we had been looking at the wrong end of the promenade!  Still intrigued by all these lines I sent a few emails on my return home to those who would know a little more and posted a plea on the 'Miniature Railway World' forum. The results of this brought a few nuggets of information and some vintage photographs. With my curiosity largely satisfied, whether I take any of this research further really depends on the motivation and time to do so, a bit like railway modelling really…

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

September Sunshine

The first weekend in September used to mean one thing for me, the Cleethorpes Coast Light Railway's 'Models and Miniatures' Gala weekend, a mixture of model railways on display in the Griffin Hall building and usually at least one 15" gauge visitor running alongside the home fleet. It was always a very friendly event and we took 'Shifting Sands' on two occasions as it was the ideal venue to display and interpret the layout, as indeed was it's period in residence in the 'Rails to the Sands' exhibition for a couple of seasons. As one visitor commented, stepping back outside to see real 15" gauge trains at the seaside after watching 'Shifting Sands' became a little confusing!

'Shifting Sands' at Cleethorpes in 2009, the author and Spongebob-clad helper.

Alas, with the changes to Griffin Hall to accommodate much of the 'Rails to the Sands' content from the display over the road, and the tightening economics of moving 15" gauge equipment between sites, the event has not run in the last few years. As the recent 1940s-themed event featuring 'Katie' from Windmill Farm proved visiting locomotives at the railway are still popular, however it is easy to underestimate the amount of effort, careful negotiation and expenditure to bring in multiple visiting locomotives for a railway-themed gala event. It is hard to imagine now the kind of gala event that the CCLR ran in the mid-1990s being feasible in today's economic climate, with up to 6 visiting locomotives at some events. The September events usually brought some of the last summer sunshine to the coast, an added bonus!

'Synolda' from Ravenglass at Cleethorpes September 2008

At one of the last 'Models and Miniatures' events the comment was heard that the circus was about to roll on to the next town for the following weekend. Indeed it did, as the second weekend of the month is that of the Kirklees Light Railway's gala weekend and at that time some of the locomotives, and many of the visitors, would attend both events.  The photo above was taken the week before the KLR's 'Battle of the Atlantics' gala.  The last few years have been a different story, as the KLR team have been able to accommodate larger (and potentially more crowd pleasing) visitors than before. This year will see Romney, Hyth & Dumchurch 'Pacific' no.7 'Typhoon' visit alongside Bure Valley tank no.8 'Thunder'. I'm not sure how they will be able to top that next year, but I've every confidence that they will...

The author aboard BVR no. 8 'Thunder' in 2008

Colin