Bye Bye Bideford

2 posts in a week, that must mean summer is over and the model railway season is back in full swing, or something. Anyway, suitably inspired by saturdays day out, and boosted by not drinking that night, lead me to feeling nice and bright sunday morning, which in turn meant that i had a good few hours working on Hartland Junction. Well, i had a good few hours sitting on a chair daydreaming about what i wanted to do, but i did finish what i'd started the previous week (or it may have been the week before, i lose track) and that was relay the top station, previously known as 'Bideford' and sometime in the future to be known as, well, i haven't decided yet.

It was actaully suprisingly easy to do what i wanted to do, well, getting the ballast up was a bit tough, but i cleared enough, luckily, having already laid the new station throat before it was more just a case of laying the actual loops. Surprsingly, they seemed to fit perfectly with the minimum amount of track cutting, i was well happy. So much so in fact that i decided to move onto the loco too. This was more of a challenge, there was a small turntable embedded and the ground raised up around it.. Well, a few good jabs with the scredriver soon loosened them and the whole thing came up in a few goes. So i now have a new area i need to clean this weekend, and hopefully the right hand point i picked up after on ebay will turn up in time for me to properly lay the loco this weekend. I also hope to rebuild the station using the offcuts of the old Bideford platform, not sure how that's going to go, especially after a night out on saturday, but if i fuck it up i'll just take the plunge and buy a new station.. I'm quielty confident though. Then i'll need to cover the majority of the gradient behind to move the terrace house onto, it's all about creating room out there and making the railway look part of an environment. Plus i've decided it's time to actually 'finish' the first window of the branch which could do with a new layer of grass on the hill and some general tidying up.. Busy busy, but thats what Sunday mornings seem to be for now..

It's good to have a hobby!

"The John Forbes Memorial Trophy"

So i always planned to head down to Chatham this weekend for a visit to the model railway exhibition, yes, it's geeky, but i know a few people who exhibit, and a fair few traders too. The Kent Model Railway 'scene' is quite insular. I can, and do, go the big exhibitions, like the NRM one at Ally Pally which i've been to for the past couple of years, and i'd love to head to Modelworld in Brighton again, maybe next year. The local ones though are a bit more lo-fi, well, very lo-fi. I thought i'd head down though, pick up a few bits for Hartland Junction, catch up with a few of my dads old friends, it would be good way to spend a morning.. Things took a bit of an odd twist this year though. My mum called me during the week, they wanted to present a trophy for something, it was too be my choice, and it was in honour of, and named after my dad.

I can't lie, i was more than proud to step up and do the honours, it also meant my mum came along too, which not only meant i got a lift there and back, but we also got in free, result! Mostly because if i'd have had to pay £5 to get in i'd have felt more than a little ripped off. As an exhibition if was VERY light on layouts, the ususual mix of traders was as it should have been but they seemed to give up a good portion of the stalls to military/fantasy modelling, which is fine in theory, but not really if you're advertising it as a model railway exhibition. Anyway, i digress, we had a chat to the person who had kindly stumped up for and arranged the trophy, one of my dads closet 'railway' friends, slightly eccentric, but then i guess you need that if making miniature models of trains is how you choose to spend your spare time. We agreed that it would be presented for 'best layout' and i got to choose.. As i said, shame there wasn't more choice, but i knew after one quick wander round the room that is down to 2 - 'Stourford' a nice looking double track N gauge with branch heading off to a country station and ' ' well, i forget the name of the other one, but it was this lovely little dockside layout, i think the reason why that stuck out for me was because they had a CD playing with birdsounds and a general ambience. Try as i might though, i couldn't imagine my dad EVER thinking it was the better than a 'traditional' layout which is everything Stourford offered. So the decision was made, almost, i did have this daft idea for a few seconds that i should give it to Dave's Z gauge layout if only because he was the one who had the whole idea and as said, arranged it all.. Luckily though, the reality of the situation kicked in and it really did go to the best layout there. I imagine that the presentation will be taking place pretty much about now, as is generally the way during the last hour of a show, i couldnt make it down today, so i hope the guys from Stourbridge don't get too confused when given a trophy dedicated to someone they've probably never heard of, from a exhibtion in a crappy town in Kent, that nobody bothered to go to as it was sunny outside and was vastly overpriced. Still, my mum was happy as she got a nice photo of me and her, one for the mantelpiece i imagine.

Plan B

Well, not exactly plan B, more like plan ZZZZZ x 10. Ever since i can remember i've been doodling track plans, i go on a train ride and i see a station, or a set of sidings, or a bridge and i think about what it would be like in model form. Well, this it no different really, obviously theres already a layout in place, a layout that i helped to plan in the first place, but it wasn't exactly like i imagined it would be. Partly because my dad finished the trackwork while i was bumming around Australia, and partly because his idea of a perfect layout is lots of circuits with trains going round he can look at. I need a bit more to keep me entertained, something like a goods yard, or somewhere i can reverse the trains to go into/out the hidden sidings.. Either way, in the last few months i must have gone through numerous designs as to what to do, ranging from an extravagant underboard fiddle yard with extra boards for the gradients to the more simple turn half the main station into a terminus. A few weeks ago i think i cracked it, so much so that i actually started to relay the sation throat at the far end of the top station, the easy end. This is what i spent the last few days at work doing, it's where it all came together, the 'doodle' version, and the 'nice' version. Neither are 100% accurate, but they're good enough to get on with. I'm quite excited about getting on with this, i'm also more excited about actually running trains on it when it's all finished that i have been for a long time. Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.

Indietracks 2009, with no Indie and lots of tracks

[/slack] I still havent even left Inverness, and this is supposed to be a train blog, and i prattled on about going on Loch ness and stuff..

Anyway, TRAINS! and indiepop of course are what generally makes my world go round. So it was with the usual mix of over excitement, and the slightly less as each year goes round feeling of dread that the weekend wouldnt live up to expectations that we set off for this years Indietracks festival. I'm not going to talk about the bands, (wonderful, all of them) the food or the atmosphere. No, this is all about how i ended up at Butterly station on Sunday morning, slightly hungover, a little fuzzy, we took MJ Hibbett's cab, as he in turn had jumped in with our friend Clarke, but there were 5 of us, and the need for a Tesco trip for the girls, so i decided to stay and hang around the site. I always found festival sites on 'the morning after' one of those strange feelings, people just milling around, surveying the fun and excitement of the night before. Stage hands setting up for the days acts, people nursing post hangover pick me ups - a coffee, another beer. Just that general buzz of whats to come when people start to arrive. Theres nothing like it. I'd start every day like that if i could.

Butterley then, well it was quiet, there were a handful of people waiting for the Swanwick express, a few of the railway volunteers just sitting around chatting, the usual crowd of railway visitors pushing prams around and getting their pictures taken with the engine.It was just another normal day at the Railway Centre i should imagine, i wonder if they had any idea what was going on a mile or two down the road.

I managed to just miss the DMU, i think i did it on purpose, well, i know i did, because i went in the shop when the guard told me it was about to depart. I wanted this feeling of being able to take my time and make my own way around. Mark Hibbett and Clark waved as they pulled out the platform, i'm sure they thought i'd be annoyed that i just missed the train. Ah, it was lovely though, just wandering around down near the DMU's all in various states of repair, a lone class 08 just outside the shed. The outside garden railway boys were setting up for a days running, i watched a couple of engines go round, put some change in their collection box and headed back up to the station in time to catch a few pics of the DMU going back through towards Swanwick. I was a bit gutted the railway club's layout wasn't open, that was always an Indietracks highlight for me, seeing how they were getting on with it, thinking back to when i first walked in in April 2007, completely captivated by this wonderful and strange event that was taking place. I was really impressed with the layout they had there, and i loved it at the festival when they ran modern image one day, and steam the other, small things.. It's certainly better than the sad excuses for layouts they have at the Swanwick site.

Talking of.. It was time to head down there, Butterley is a lovely place to sit and relax for 5 minutes or so, but time was ticking on.. There was a handful of people who all decided to take the walk to Swanwick, a few obvious festival goers (the wristbands just give it away) a couple of locals, and it seemed, some young farmer who seemed happy to sing along to his ipod as he walked along. I decided to hang back a bit so i could take my time, i really wanted to time it so the steam train went by, but i missed that. What a lovely walk though, it crosses the line just after the Butterley signal box and heads up the hill, so you walk alongside the line, but above it. Leaving Butterley you pass what looks like a carriage graveyard, i guess it's a siding or two, but the rusted carriages in there, probably awaiting attention, made a nice contrast to the both the well restored stock at Swanwick and the summer trees and bushes that were just about covering them. The rest of the journey just dips in and out of view of the tracks, maybe for a mile or so, as you get closer to Swanwick the area opens out and you start to see the engines and the carriages and the yard, the path heads back down to track level, and as you come out of the trees you get this perfect view of the diesels all just sitting there, moved out of the way so 100s of popkids could drink and dance all weekend. I never really spent too much time in this part of the centre before, maybe just a casual wander round that first year, but here i was surrounded by 47s, 40s, a class 20, 50007 Sir Edward Elgar, a Western, maybe a 45.. It was great, like the proverbial kid in a sweet shop, it was like i'd been transported back in time to my dad taking me to open days as a kid and getting all excited as i got to go in the cab of a Deltic or something.. Unfortunately, there were no cab visits this time, everything was understandably locked up. It was still a great way to spend an hour or so on a Sunday morning though...I planned to go and have a look round the shed too, i poked my head round the door and it seemed very well stocked, alas though i had a Sunday morning appointment in the Church..

A summer wasting..

So it's not really the weather for model railways, traditionally it's a winter hobby, cooped up in a shed/loft/club room pouring over the intricate details which other people seem to be overly concerned with. This means progress is understandably slow down in Gravesend (as evident in lack of updates) the lure of my mums back garden and her cooking and sitting in the sun is just too much. Thats not to say progress has stopped completely, it's just carrying on a much more leisurely pace. I've almost finished all the track laying, but i need to extend the board out to finish the station area, which calls for a trip to B&Q to buy some wood.. Ballasting has been started, it's looking nice, but needs to be painted and weathered really, and i now have some nice green areas taking shape. I saw a couple of big trees in the model shop the other day, i think it might be a pay day treat. Oh, i also spent a pleasant couple of evenings in my flat building these little beauties -

It's good to get back on the kit bandwagon, i'll be picking up some more of these as time goes on.

Of course, theres plenty of oppurtunites in the summer to take a look at the real thing. We were 'supposed' to go to San Francisco on holiday this year, but ended up in Scotland, best of all, we ended up in Scotland riding the trains. If it wasn't for the Pains of Being Pure at Heart we'd have travelled up to Inverness by train too, but due to a visit from New York's finest we had to fly. To be honest, it was a strange flight, it didn't feel like the plane was actually moving, and i was glad to get off. Inverness is a lovely town (city?) and even though it was slightly overrun with kids there for the Rockness festival it didn't feel as crowded as Reading, for expample, ever did over festival weekend. The trains had to take a back seat on the first day though as we took a really relaxing boat ride across Loch Ness, for some reason i thought this would be a pretty barren place, quite dark and depressing, i mean, Nessie isn't going to live somewhere warm and tranquil, and with hills stretching either side of the wide loch and the sunshine reflecting off the water, and not to mention how beautiful the ruins of Urquhart castle are, is she?

We got back into the Inverness early afternoon, to be honest, there wasn't that much else going on, we shopped, we drank, we went to a ridiculously overpriced second hand bookshop, we had dinner overlooking the castle, all very nice, but i was looking forward to the train ride the following day...

The West Somerset Railway

So i really only started writing this as a way of documenting whats going on with my newly acquired model railway, but i was sitting on a train heading down to Somerset on Friday for this past weekend's ATP and i figured i may as well write about REAL railways, and real railway trips, ones where you get to ride on trains, and see trains, and hang out with like minded people. I've made a much bigger effort to actually 'do train stuff' in the last few years, i got to the age when i realised i actually wanted to do it, and if people don't get it, well, fuck 'em.

So ATP then, it was pretty amazing, probably the best one i've been to, but then this isn't about ATP or the fact that i'm regretting getting to be 34 and having never heard a Shellac record, this is about getting up at 8:30 on sunday morning after not nearly enough sleep and far too much vodka the night before. I made it though, grabbed a cuppa and a sandwich, quick shower then out the door. It's always quite surreal wandering around festivals in the morning and seeing it all just so quiet and asleep, and that continued walking up past the beach in Minehead, there were so few people there i managed to decide in my head that they'd cancel the train. I needn't have worried though, the platform was nicely full, including a few people with tell tale red ATP wristbands on, so at least i knew i wasn't the only one stupid enough to do this. I bought my 'day rover' ticket, the clerk in the ticket office told me i could go back and forth as much as i wanted with that, but i only wanted one trip, to the end of the line and back.

We left Minehead on the dot at 10:15, pulled out the station and past the Butlins, it was overcast, but not too bad, for an extra 20p i purchased the guide to the line so i spent the first 10 minutes or so just having a bit of a read and settling in. The journey to Bishops Lydeard took about 1hr 15mins, and before long i found myself in an almost empty carriage, a few people had got off and on along the way. There were a few places i'd like to have seen up close, the diesel shed at Williton, the wonderful looking pub at Washford that you see on the way to Butlins, and Bishops Lydeard itself which houses the Taunton MRC's layout, which from the pictures looked suitably impressive. Unfortunately though, it decided to piss it down just ouside of Bishops Lydeard, and that made the decsion easy enough for me. I had 10 minutes to cross platforms and head on back to Minehead by DMU, in a perfect world i'd have had a leisurely stroll around Bishops Lydeard, a bit of a nose at the layout and headed back also by steam train in time for the afternoon re-awakening of the ATP crowd. Still, it was a nice juxtapostion to travel back by DMU, it was cold on there, it was noisy, the seats were harder, it's a funny thing progress, OK, it should have been quicker (it wasn't, but thats because you just realised how slow you were going, i guess that's what the timetable is for) but there was no soul to it, and for me to say that being of the diesel generation is quite something. My dad would be proud (and surprised!)

All in all, aside from the weather, it was a pretty perfect morning, the railway is exceptionally well run, and the scenery along the coast is pretty special, it's a beautiful part of the country, and going from fields, to the sea, to woods, to hills all in an idyllic setting is just a wonderful way to spend the morning..

..spending the afternoon drinking, dancing and watching bands is also a whole heap of fun, but as i said up there, this isn't the place for that.. Now if only there was somewhere i could go that would combine the two!

I'm on a steaming train..

Ah, it's almost ATP weekend, so i won't be making the trip to Gravesend and all work on Hartland Junction will have to be postponed, and it's Galway next weekend so nothing until the end of May. This is my 4th Minehead ATP, and the first one away from December when you can't go on the West Somerset Railway as it's all kids and Santa Specials.. We booked up for this Breeders weekend late last year, i wondered at the time how i'd break the news to my dad that i'd miss his birthday, i havent liked to do that in the last few years but i figured, well, theres always next year. There isn't a next year anymore though, so i'm going to do what i always planned to down there, and spend Sunday morning on the West Somerset Railway, the trip takes on a extra level of poignancy as i remembered the other day that he spent a happy few months down there training people to drive Steam Trains.. I just hope my inevitable hangover doesn't ruin the trip!

Anyway, theres been a few developments on the layout, i got (not enough) brown paint and almost covered the first hill, the viaduct has been bedded in with an embankment and the castle is almost 'home' I tidied up a lot too, which helps to see what comes next!

The hills are alive...

..apparantly, with the sound of the music.

It was a good day, i spent a whopping (almost) £4 the other week on a pair of ipod speakers from Tesco, they're not the loudest, but they'll do.. So they live out in the train room now and i get something to listen to whilst i 'work'. Albums seem to fly by out there, i guess thats because i'm actually busy doing something that i want to be doing.

Anyway, the hills are indeed alive, as thats what took up most of my afternoon, the first 'window' now has a hill attached, mod-roc is fun, i remember building hills as a kid and really enjoying seeing them come together then, well, not much has changed! I really enjoyed what i did today, theres 2 levels of track, fully laid, a hill between the 2, a tunnel mouth, it's really coming on.. Of course, it's still white, and i still need to ballast the track and do the scenery, but that will come.. 'Window' 2 now has the viaduct across it, although it needs a little attention, and i need to get more mod-roc to form the hills at each end, but that shouldn't be too bad..

I forgot my camera today, so more pictures next week.. Then it gets fun, what do i do with the station/yard area.. Thats going to be the challenge!

An (almost) blank canvas

I wanted to post a couple of 'before' pictures, well, not before pictures as that would show the original side of the layout that i was never really that happy with. I've never understood my dads fascination with these pissy little stations every few inches, i'll be removing (re-developing would be a better description) these as time goes on.

Insted i'll post a couple of pictures i took just after the new windows were put in and i actually decided i wanted to do this. That viaduct looked really nice across the first window (the one with that green piece of wood and the chicken wire in the first picture) but i decided to actually build a higher level across the gap so i can have some hidden sidings below actually running onto the window sill. That means putting the viaduct where it is curently standing (second picture) across the middle window.


















The third window is where i threw everything and is a mess right now, but i need to extend the board out in line with the door before i really decide what to do with it. I have decided to move the ruined castle here though as it's lost where it is.




This weekend though, it's all about trying to figure out what the fuck i'm actually doing after diving in headfirst last week and trying to build the new part of the high level without really thinking it through properly. I'm also going to paint the rails a rust colour.

I live a Rock n' Roll lifestyle for sure.. So much so that i'm sitting here on a Friday night when i should really be in the pub. Oh well.

I recently inherited a shed..

It's something of a right of passage into *cough* middle age. It's seemingly a popular enough topic to warrant a couple of those books that are always given as slightly whacky christmas presents. Men and their sheds. Just what do men do in their sheds?

Well, mines more of a brick building, it's been there as long as i remember, there being my mums back garden in Gravesend. It was built, probably before i was born, for one sole reason (apparantly not covered in the book) - It housed my dad's model railway. It was a TT gauge layout, and i don't remember any of it, i've seen pictures, but apparantly i convinced him to sell it all sometime in the late 70s/early 80s and buy a shitload of OO, you know, the Hornby train set that is also a right of passage. Well, it was for me. Anyway, this shed never really housed a permanent layout as long as i ever remember, it was just used to build portable ones, or in the case of what was probably his crowning achievement, the big Model Railway at York Railway Station. It was built 2 boards at a time and transported up by van. It was the 80s, 'The Age of the Train' It was even opened by Jimmy Saville.

Then sometime around summer 2004 he started work on actually building the layout he wanted in there. The 'trainroom' as it was always known as, was actually finally going to live up to it's name. Well, 5 years or so later, it's was as finished as it was ever going to be. Or so i thought.

I lost my dad almost 3 months ago, and i guess it's obvious that after something like that happening a lot of soul searching takes place and a lot of decisions have to be taken. I didn't have a clue what to do with this thing at first, i knew i didn't want to dismantle it, or sell it, but then i wasn't sure if i could carry on going out there and keeping it maintained and running. I don't even live in the same town as it now, so it's not like i could just pop in every so often..

Then it all became clear. On the day of the funeral the driver of the van that would regularly come down from york and transport the boards back up, who hadn't really kept in touch with my parents, aside probably from a christmas card every year, came down with his wife. He said he couldn't miss it, and of course wanted to see the layout in the train room, as did everyone who came round the house that morning. So i took them out there, and it was one of the proudest monents of my life. That and being told afterwards that one of his friends had tried to count the amount of people in the crematorium but had lost count at 200.

3 weeks ago we got new windows in the shed, it was something he was planning to do for a while, but it meant i had to pretty much rip up one side of the layout. As i was taking it up and putting it all in boxes i had this thought that as much as it was his layout and he built it and paid for it, it was something we did together, and it was now mine, and i could do what i wanted with it, so i am, and this is where i'm going to keep track (pun slightly intended) of everything.

I just about managed to not saw into my finger today, and in hindsight buying spray paint and using it in an unventilated room probably wasn't the best thing i could have done, but i'll get there!