Romp in the Grass

Serene Sunday. Catcott Crossing sometime in the mid-1950s. Driver Gary and Fireman Baldy bring their train over the crossing. They’ll briefly stop to drop a little coal off for Cindy Swift the crossing keeper in exchange for some rough cider. Parked on the bridge is Beryl’s old heap, she is nowhere to be seen, though yesterday she was spotted with Comical Ned (with the funny shaped head) down on Bridgwater Docks - so it’s quite possible they’re having a romp in the nearby tall grass. Ah, those rose-tinted goggles of olden times. Click to enlarge if you want to see if you can find Beryl. 

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Moonshine

It’s another Saturday down by the canal. Doug, Colin & Barry are dealing bottles of illicit booze as Andrew & Barclay trundle past. Pete & Dud are waiting for Archibald to fix the water tank stopcock. Shortly Archibald will discover that the water tank has been repurposed as an undercover moonshine production plant. Running water and plenty of nearby coal to heat the mash and still within make it ideal. 

In the distance, outside the pickled winkle factory, Comical Ned (with the funny shaped head) tries to capture the attention of Beryl who has just arrived in her Austin 7. Ned has had a crush on Beryl for years, he likes the mature ladies. Beryl however is after an engine driver, or any man who knows how to use a big spanner and is a dab hand with a grease gun - her car is unreliable and her joints regularly need attention to loosen them up.

Click to enlarge….

New Wave

A wet chilly February Friday In 1968. Somewhere a little north of Preston, a Black Five 4-6-0 speeds past our intrepid photographer (there with permission I hasten to add). His Rolleiflex loaded with uprated Ilford HP4 b&w film capturing this gritty image inspired by celebrated ‘new wave’ photographer Colin Gifford. Click to enlarge …

Tunnel View

Shortly before the photographer was flatten by the engine, he took this snap from his folding step ladder. Within the tunnel on Cement Quay. Such are popular with steam rail tour photographers, as they all line up in a row taking identical shots whist comparing ladders and the biggest f2.8 pro spec zoom. Click to enlarge. 

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Mulder & Scully

Before Mulder & Scully were celebrity UFO & alien hunters, they were cops on the beat seeking bodies in dumped cars. But their inner passion for trainspotting always delayed findings, getting those numbers always held more attraction than 10 day old rotting flesh. This of course worked in their favour career wise, being semi useless ensured speedy promotion out of harms way. Click to enlarge…

Piggyback Style

 Tidy Tuesday. Ivo’s Bentley looking rather tidy, posed in the tiny goods yard at Catcott. A narrow gauge steamer has just arrived piggyback style for the nearby narrow gauge peat railway recently taken over by preservationists . A Poole bound goods thunders through right on cue.

Platinum Jubbly

Platinum Jubbly Day! Liz & Margo and Liz’s stunt double Albert alight the special train to meet Henry the Horse. Henry, as we all know, is the only horse on the planet fluent in conversational Latin. Young Tony, the horse whisperer is in complete awe, kneeling down as instructed. Hopefully Nasal Nigel, temporary custodian of Henry the Horse has his mac firmly buttoned up, raw winkles are not on the menu at such a royal event. Luvvelly Jubbly! Click to enlarge…. 

Digital Capture of B&W Negative Film Using DSLR or Mirrorless Camera

I have 1000s of negatives, digitization using a traditional scanner would be a very long drawn out process unless you have super expensive bulk scanning gear. The result of this method appears to give a good results for my needs, the workflow in my case probably 10 times faster than traditional scanning with the gear I have. The resulting quality is easily good enough for a double page spread in a magazine or at least A3 print. I’m presuming you are confident shooting RAW and have basic Photoshop skills, plenty of stuff online if not. Click on the images below to enlarge if need be  

Sholing Railway station. Summer 1982. Kodak Plus X negative, ‘scanned’ using a DSLR, a tripod mounted Nikon D5200 in this case with a 55mm Micro Nikkor set at F11 (a sweet spot aperture wise and enough depth of field should the negative have a slight bow). I used an iPad with a plain white image as a makeshift light box, and a 35mm film holder from an old scanner.

 

After taking the photo of the film negative and transferring the file to your computer, In Photoshop Adobe RAW, open your camera RAW file as you would normally, crop, straighten etc. Now the clever bit. Select ‘Curves’, then select the ‘Linear’ drop down. What we want to do is turn the negative image in to a positive. Note the diagonal line, that will be the attention of the next image.

Tick the dot in the red circle. Then drag each end the diagonal line up/down to mirror the previous image. Bingo! You have a positive image!

 

Adjust the curve to increase contrast to suit. If you’re familiar with Adobe RAW you’ll discover that the curve controls are back to front. Not an issue. Not shown here, but then use the other controls like lens correction, noise reduction, sharpening and so on as you would normally. Once happy, it’s worth exporting the profile as an XMD file, next time all you’ll have to do is load that. Export resulting image in to Photoshop proper to finish off your edit.

FOMO

Saturday morning down by the canal. Doug, Colin, Pete and Dud are suspicious of Barry Bullhead who is charming them with a crate of illicit hooch. This is most unusual, for Mr Bullhead is a time and motion man from the Ministry of Misery. Reg and Comical Ned (with the funny shaped head) peer over from the platform, suffering marginal FOMO. Nasal Nigel, eager to try out his new flasher mac pops up from the undergrowth like a meerkat “Oh, mother won’t be impressed, booze in the workplace, whatever next? I’d better go and investigate”. 

Front and Rear Ends

 #frontandrearendfriday - it’s a new thing don’t you know… deep down in Cornwall (which oddly looks just like Combwich), the final section of the Atlantic Coast Express arrives. Beattie the tank engine wiggles with joy “it’s my racy friend all the way from that there London 🥰”. Click to enlarge …

Booze Runners

More rose-tinted Hornby sized nonsense from the inch high stars of little England. Here we see rare colour film production still from the 1958 Ealing Comedy ‘Whisky No More’. On the right, Mr Barry Bullhead and Shamus O’Bellboy from the Ministry of Misery arrive to investigate the dodgy goings on, whilst Pete & Dud pretend check over the loco to buy time.  Meanwhile Derek & Clive on the left quietly retrieve the milk churns of illicit moonshine from the cab. Click to enlarge …..

Pickled Winkles

It's Wednesday, and the 9.05am Highbridge Wharf to Evercreech goods rumbles through Catcott Burtle. A good mixed load this morning, coal, pickled winkles, canned guff, frozen fried egg sandwiches, jellyfish in aspic, full-sized fibreglass cows and Belgian chocolate teapots. Click to enlarge

 

The Summer of '59

A classic West Country branchline scene from the summer of ‘59. It’s almost as if all the little people and train are posed for the camera. That rose-tinted parallel universe is such a great place to be. And of course they all went to the nearby pub as soon as the train passed. Click to enlarge.

Neath Riverside - A Slice of 1960s South Wales

Scale OO / 1:76

Click on images for a bigger view..

I've been working on this layout commission for much of the year alongside other projects. It’s a new build supported with some wonderful secondhand buildings salvaged from a layout by ace model maker Iain Robertson. The station area seen here is housed in a 6ft x 18 inch diorama case. It is the first of several scenes that link together.

The railway room that this destined to live in has grown significantly since taking on the commission, so a colliery and further rural scene are under currently construction. These will extend the layout by around 300%.... more to follow..

A watery scene - the tide is out, so probably a smelly location. No supermarket trolleys, they're more a feature of modern times!

A Western Region Stanier 2-8-0 trundles through Neath Riverside past a few coal bins. The trackplan is based on an Iain Rice design from the 1980s.

Looking towards the twin tunnel portals - this is in fact a junction - the Class 22 coming off a military line with a van train.

Shunting the river side yard. Extensive use has been made of the recent Peco Bullhead range, which creates that hand-built look with ease.

July 2020 Model Rail magazine features the first of a 2 part series on Neath Riverside explaining the construction in greater detail https://www.greatmagazines.co.uk/model-rail-july-2020

Sunday Ukulele Strummalong - Putting on the Style

Sunday Strummalong in the spring garden avoiding flying drones - Putting on the Style by the great Lonnie Donegan

Hotchpotch Rd & Little Smoke Junction

Back in the summer I built this little customer layout to fit in 3 of those popular plastic storage crates that are a little under 3 feet long and around 10 inches wide and deep.

I was supplied with detailed plans of what should go where by my customer stipulating buildings and track required. Due to his excellent planning it all worked a treat, as well as being great fun to build. I tip my hat to you sir if you read this post.

The build time of this fun little layout was 87 hours spread over a month or so.

A run around loop allows for a short train and small tender loco, the loco here being a Hornby J15. Much use was made of ready made items, this can be a more affordable option than scratch or kit-building for those on a limited budget.
Photo copyright Chris Nevard.

Looking through to the terminus - Hotchpotch Road.
Photo copyright Chris Nevard.

Both scenic boards - the scene here is around 5 feet long split over two boards.
Photo copyright Chris Nevard.

'The Smoke Junction' - the recent run of exciting ready to run smaller locomotives being ideal for a layout like this.
Photo copyright Chris Nevard. 

'Hotchpotch Road' - the buildings are from PECO and Ratio kits, the track is PECO set track. The wonderful laser cut sign on the signal box is from www.scalemodelscenery.co.uk
Photo copyright Chris Nevard. 

The layout can be stored in 3 boxes, the left hand box being used for the fiddle yard and storage.
Photo copyright Chris Nevard.

Polite Notice!
All photography copyright Chris Nevard. Unauthorized use may incur legal action. Apologies for posting this, but frequently I find my photography on third party and often commercial pages without prior consent. If you need to use an image, drop me a line - I don't bite, unless of course you don't ask.

Trainset!

On the pick-up goods, Guildford shed's No. 33019 simmers in the goods yard at Porth Emmet Railway Station - click to enlarge.

Recently I was commissioned to build a traditional 5 x 4 foot trainset. I've wanted to build such for some time, so this build was going to be even more fun than usual. I have a feeling that even the most serious diehards of the hobby secretly crave a traditional trainset, though they might not mention it to their peers!

5 x 4 feet of roundy-roundy trainset joy. Operation is surprisingly fun, with much of the charm being to simply let a train run round and round and round and round and round and round.... Click to enlarge.

Design wise, seeing what could be shoe horned on to a dining room sized board without cramping things was going to be fun. With the sharp set track curves, I could have packed a lot more track in, but then I fear any lean towards 'realism' would have been compromised.

Part of the brief in addition to the set track, was to use as many pre-made items as possible, partially to keep the cost down (because I wouldn't need to charge for scratch building), but also to achieve a speedy build if to demonstrate that model railways don't have to take years. However, whilst all the tricks of the trade were embraced for rapid result, I wanted the scenic treatment to be at the same level as my more serious model railway builds.

The layout took just 11 working days, spread over a two week period. This layout will be on permanent public display at Kernow Model Centre's new Guildford store from May 2019.

Day 2 in to the build, two 5 x 2 foot boards allow the layout to be split down the middle for ease of transit. 5 x 4 feet is quite a big area to cart about as one piece. The laser cut baseboards were supplied by www.timhorn.co.uk

Combwich look-a-likey

I’m currently building a OO Gauge layout based on Combwich for a customer. It’s using a mix of secondhand buildings and kits. Size is around 9 x 7 feet scenic in a L shape. The build so far has taken around 4 months. I hope to deliver and install it in its new home in just a few weeks. We have decided to call the layout Combwich West.

Combwich West Station , as a train from Bridgwater arrives. 

The morning service has just departed Cannington Halt and is passing the timber yard Sidings. 

Combwich West Level crossing 

3 x 1 Plank

A personal quickie I worked on last week for me between commercial jobs, all on a 3x1 plank. The inspiration is the Wisbech and Upwell Tramway, a mostly unfenced railway that ran next to, or actually along the road in deepest Cambridgeshire through to the 1960’s. Give it a Google.

The wonderful town buildings were a lucky secondhand find, they just had to be used, they were very much the catalyst for this speedy project. The buildings are at least at least 30 years old and once lived on a much bigger layout which has since been broken up. Sadly I have no further information to hand. If you know of the layout or the builder, please comment in the comments section.

The windmill is an Airfix/Dapol kit knocked up in the spring, in reality such a structure would have fallen out of use a good century before the railway came. The rail served shed with door is a chopped up Bachmann colliery wash-house modified with pitch roof and doors. Its use is a mystery, maybe a paintshop for pumpkins or storage for pedant’s ruck sacks. The other shed, another ready to plonk thing that had been gathering dust.

Track is PECO, ballasted with sieved grit from our local common. The cheapo quickie cobbles were created using the empty shell of a ballpoint pen pressed in to Das clay. All in all around 18 hours work, this project being more an assembly of existing bits than a true build.

It will link in to other modules in due course to allow through running. At some stage it will live in an illuminated diorama case to fit it with my other layouts. Track has been aligned so it can connect to my other layout Brew Street. I’ve Brew Street booked in to the Rochdale Expo In April 2019, so will probaby add this module.

Click on photos above and below for a bigger view...

85 Hours

A little customer commission I’m just finishing off. Scenic footprint just 4x1 feet (fiddle yard extra on left hand side still to be built). It depicts a Colonel Stephens-ish branch line terminus. A bit of a squeeze, but managed to get a run around loop in just long enough for two passenger carriages.

The motley selection buildings are a selection of well known kits and a grubbed up Bachmann wooden engine shed. Track is good old fashioned copper clad which allowed me to fit everything to the small footprint, not be restricted by ready made point geometry. The diorama case is Tim Horn laser kit. For the first time I tried out LED lighting, a mix of warm and cool strips. The backscene my own creation printed at the local printers.

Around 85 hours,  working on and off, beginning first week of last month. I’ve wanted to build something like this for some time, having a passion for olde worlde run down middle of nowhere.

Click on the photos for bigger views you can really zoom in to!

BBQ Skewers

Passing the loading gauge on Polbrook Gurney Colliery. I used code 55 rail here for that lightweight industrial look. Filing the point switch blades takes moments with such fine profile rail.

Note one of my ‘budget’ yard lamps. Bbq skewer, bent nail with a slice of plastic tube. 5 mins work. Bamboo blinds make an inexpensive source of fine bamboo otherwise, the lean-to was made from such. Scale OO 1/76. 

Click on the above photo for a bigger view.

Sticky Backed Plastic

Model railway commission update: 

I picked up the photo printed backscene a short while ago (from AJ Signs in Guildford).

It is intentionally over sized to allow me to trim 3 or 4 cm off the base so it looks right from just above track level. It is simply inserted in to the diorama case temporarily for this photo.

Scenic work will hide the transition from 2D to 3D. The backscene is printed on to matt laminated sticky backed plastic, which in turn will be stuck in to card to allow for curved corners.

I hope to complete this little layout very shortly. More updates soon.

Click for a bigger view....

Thanks Allan

Click on the photo to enlarge

There are many ways to weather models, here’s a Dapol (Airfix) water tower/tank kit (a bargain that can be found for around 6 or 7 ££££) after a blast of a few primers. 

I usually start with the black and mist over the other shades. The yellow filler primer is fairly new to me, you can use it for lightly misting over Model trees along with the red for an early autumn look too. 

Here’s the result after 2 or 3 minutes. Further work can be performed with washes and dry brushing if desired. 

These paints are very toxic, so always work outside if you can and consider a breathing mask. Posh people will have a spray booth. 

I have to acknowledge the late Allan Downes for this aerosol paint tip. 

Terminus in a Box

Some progress with a little Colonel Stephens style branch line terminus commission. Next to go in will be the backscene which is currently at the printers and some brighter than normal LED lighting which arrived a short while ago. I’ll then be able to perform the scenic work which will transform things dramatically. The little holes along the front now have inset tiny toggle switches for electric point operation. I’ll post more updates soon. Scale 1/76, this space is 4 x 1 feet.

Click on the photo for a bigger view