Better Late Than Never

Wow! That was good wasn't it? Expo, I mean. 50 years? It seemed like there were nearly fifty layouts.

Well done to everyone who contributed in whatever way.

Now I know, I haven't blogged for what appears like fifty years. But so much gets in the way of modelling sometimes. Suitably encouraged by Expo, where Brafferton performed reasonably well for much of the time, I press on.

For Oxford, I painted two part backscenes to relieve the mass of hardboard that would have otherwise formed the backdrop. On my return, I've started using these to sketch out what the backscene really ought to look like:

Also, the 04 finally got chipped and seems to be running well in it's new DCC state.

The legs on Brafferton were commented on quite a lot over that Expo weekend. These were substantially the idea of Edward who also helped with their construction. Indeed Edward and Alan Smith have contributed greatly to the legs and baseboard side of things on Brafferton; thanks for your support guys:

How long to the next blog? Soon, soon...

Posing the 04

As well as model railways, one of my other keen interests is photography. However, I've never really mastered the art of taking good model shots. Maybe I'm in too much of a rush, maybe I don't get the lighting just right... most of the pictures I take for this blog are purely for the purpose of recording progress (or lack thereof) rather than as a picture in its own right.

Having nearly finished the 04 (wheels back from Gordon at the end of last week), I thought I'd try and take some more worthy snaps; here are my initial attempts. The first thing that struck me is how obvious some of the original colours are showing through on roof edges, grab handles and coupling rods. To be fair these are substantially less apparent on the actual model (thank goodness!). I'm quite pleased with the actual photos; I think my technique is improving. These images posted here are about 25% of the resolution of the original shots; imagine how scary they look!

The model now awaits DCC chipping; I think I'll get one of the Zimo chips which should be small enough to go in the cab area.