NEAG February 2025 meeting

A decent crowd turned out for 4mm modeller John Elliott's presentation on his approach to modelling, painting and weathering. John's interest is in historical modelling of the collieries and private railway systems of Northumberland and Durham, with a little bit of Cumberland by way of the Brampton Railway. He brought along some examples of his exquisite industrial buildings by way of illustration.

I think it's fair to say that we all learnt something (and in my case, a lot) from John's presentation. For example, his basic technique for stonework is to use B&Q ready-mixed filler spread onto a foamboard or plasticard carcass. This is then scribed once dry, albeit dampening the surface again first with water using a paintbrush.

Part of John's P4 layout project is a brickworks, and the following photo is a typical Newcastle kiln:

This engine shed shows a larger expanse of stone wall. Interestingly, John tends not to put any glazing in his windows. He thinks that this is more realistic than having a transparent film of over-scale thickness, at least from normal viewing distances where windows invariably just look dark. Indeed we didn't notice the lack of glass in the engine shed windows until he pointed it out!

I got the impression John was rather fond of the following – a signal box converted to another use. Like all of his buildings, this is based on a real prototype.

An important aspect of John's talk was the painting process. Suffice to say that a mixture of different paints are used, including acrylics for primer and basic body colour, artists oils for (mainly) weathering, and watercolour pencils. The results speak for themselves. 

NEAG December 2024 meeting

Storm Darragh failed to put a stop to today's group meeting, with a slightly depleted thirteen of us braving the wind and rain for our annual Christmas "show and tell". Here is a selection of photos for those who missed it.

Graham explains his scheme to model Hexham in the 1980s – the track plan features an impressive number of sidings:

John had a selection of coaches and two LMS loco projects on display:

I brought a selection of recent Highland Railway wagons and coaches (in varying stages of completeness), and my "Small Ben" 4-4-0 which almost runs:

New recruit Richard is building a rather nice model of Guisborough. The stonework is fantastic although this photo doesn't do it justice:

Finally, Mick brought some of his colliery wagons, recently finished by Chris with home-printed transfers:

He also showed a set of etches for colliery headgear (courtesy of Alex Duckworth), and there was some discussion of how to make the wheels turn:

The main tea eluded photography. However, one member came only for the tea and was disappointed to be allowed only some crumbs:

NEAG October 2024 meeting

Over 20 of us gathered again, this time for a "cameo double bill". George and Mick each spoke about their ongoing layout projects within the "cameo" concept, as espoused by the late Iain Rice.

Here, George is describing the thinking behind the design of his (4mm) layout "Skeetsmere" – a Mid-Suffolk Light Railway scheme with very carefully thought out visuals, along with very well engineered plywood construction. (See more on Western Thunder: https://www.westernthunder.co.uk/threads/the-chronicles-of-canary-sidings-eastern-eccentricity-in-em.11235/page-21)

Mick then gave an update about progress on Pit Hill Incline, which started in fact as a joint project with Iain Rice himself. (The original incline concept appears in the "Creating Cameo Layouts" book.) Progress has seen a huge amount of work on timbering to cover the sleepers, work on the sector plates and off-stage tracks, as well as an initial impression of buildings and scenery ahead of Railwells. Not to mention the all-important proscenium arch, as seen below:

Mick has since rebuilt the box as he thought the layout
had too much sky.

Another unifying theme of the two layouts was that both will be in show as works in progress at WorkshopWise next Saturday at Stannington...

NEAG August 2024 meeting

 

We had a good turnout last Saturday for visiting speaker Tim Shackleton's presentation "Back in time with a camera". Tim is a well-known modeller and former editor of MRJ, and made the journey up north for the weekend. He even went home with a stack of old MRJs courtesy of our "free to a good home" table!

The talk was a fascinating journey through Tim's near-lifetime of photographing the real railway, with the unusual but rather poignant structure of starting with recent freight operations and progressing backward in time, all the way back to his schoolboy exploits with a Kodak Brownie. His overall point (as I remember it) was that he's not interested in nostalgia. Rather, he is enthused by the fact that the real railway – like the world it runs through – is constantly changing and evolving. This passage of time adds another dimension to the hobby.

As always, we rounded off by enjoying a hearty tea!

NEAG June 2024 meeting

This time around there was a bit of excitement as the planned speaker had to pull out with a week's notice. Consequently the group had to endure a presentation about backscenes by organiser Anthony. He presented some illustrated thoughts on what to think about, followed by a quick demo of how to use artist's acrylics. Not quite Turner prize material....

The general gist of the talk was that there are two extremes: keeping it simple as advocated by Lance Mindheim, or going for an all-singing, all-dancing three-dimensional visual experience à la Paul Bambrick. Since we are in the realm of "art", there is no one correct answer. But beginners should definitely consider the first approach... Copies of their respective books were on hand to have a look at too: Model Railroading as Art comes highly recommended as practical, clear advice, but there is much to learn from Creating a Backscene: A Railway Modelling Companion, albeit that the techniques are much more advanced.

Fortunately, the usual team were on hand in the kitchen to help us recover from the talk.

NEAG March 2024 meeting

Around 14 members gathered for a slightly early "April" meeting, for group organiser Andrew's demonstration of how he is working the colour-light signals on his Swinton layout.

Andrew had knocked up a demo board using Kato N gauge track, with various wiring and electronics that he patiently explained, with the help of the computer and a whiteboard. We were treated to a cab view video travelling through the real Swinton, and even had the added benefit of direct experience: one of our members (Ed) works through the station regularly, and shared his frustration with the signalman who has been known to wrongly set the route for Doncaster rather than Leeds after changes to the timetable... The only teething problem today was in the practical demonstration when it transpired that Andrew had unplugged a key component in order to pass it around the group for closer inspection, but no-one had thought to plug it back in again.

The signals themselves are from Absolute Aspects, who were happy to supply only the heads (and feather route indicators), given that Andrew wants, naturally, to scratchbuild more prototypical posts. The main thrust of the talk was how he is using Arduino boards to control the logic for operating the signals: the board is fed information both about the setting of the points – because this is a junction – and about the track occupancy – so that the signals go red automatically as trains pass through them. Occupancy detection uses a nifty little board from Megapoints:

This is just wired in series to the track power feed, and uses an optocoupler to isolate the wires to the Arduino. By programming the Arduino, it is then quite straightforward to get the signals not only to deal with the necessary logic, but also to cycle through the sequence of aspects based on a timer, to pretend that the train is heading on up the line when in reality it's just entered the fiddle yard. We were suitably impressed!

Oh, and of course we were treated to the usual delicious tea...

NEAG Christmas meeting

 A dozen or so of us got together on Saturday the 11th for our Christmas get together which took the form of the third part of group member Ed Orwin's presentation on the Blyth and Tyne railway metals.

The presentation was entitled South of Newsham’ which covered:

Newsham to Northumberland Dock

The Avenue Branch to Tynemouth

Earsdon Junction to New Bridge Street/Manors North.

An interesting look at the railways in that area, and looking to the future some of the lines that will soon enjoy a new lease of life. I'm sure we would all like to see reintroduction of more, previously withdrawn passenger services, in future years. 

Below are some pictures of the gathering. We may appear very thin on the ground but your organiser completely forgot about the Blyth and Tyne club open day at North Shields at which several of our members were operating Fence Houses. 

Have a really good Christmas everybody and we hope to see you in 2022.

Mick S.