Model Railway TV Blog

Coming Soon to DVD: Traincation!

 

COMING SOON! Join Ron Galloway in the new TRAINCATION DVD for a train chasing trip along the Upper Mississippi River. 

Ron guides you in non-stop train watching from a variety of exciting lookouts. Highlights include stops along the BNSF main lines, the La Crosse, WI, Grand Crossing, the Genoa, WI, lock and dam, river and rail views from Tower Island, and an entertaining overview of the railroad's history along the Mississippi. 

This feature-length DVD is coming soon to www.hobbyworld.tv and will arrive just in time for Christmas!

MODELLING CANALS

MRTV CANAL BLOG

 

With the construction of a canal on the ‘Modular Layout’ featuring heavily in the next few films from MRTV, I’ve put together for you some of the pictures I took recently as a reference source for planning and making this feature on the model.

The Modular Layout is the vehicle I’m using to demonstrate techniques and approaches that a newcomer to the hobby will find useful.

This model railway is not a representation of any specific location  -  it includes features from all sorts of places round the country that I find attractive, modified as necessary at the modelling stage to, hopefully, eliminate inconsistencies such as Autumnal foliage at one end of the layout with Springtime at the other.

Whether you choose to make a railway this way or based closely on a particular place - do what will please you. The opinion of others as to your choice will depend much more on your approach to technique and the realism you achieve with your modelling.

Remember one thing when making this choice. To truly replicate a specific location can take up a lot of space. Try to select the features, buildings, landscape etc. which define the location and will make it instantly recognisable then model these in as much detail as you can.

The following pictures were taken on the Grand Union Canal, just south of Hanwell. The first three are detail shots of gear operating the 'paddles' in the lockgate to release water from the lock chamber into the pound between locks.  

Looking downhill on the flight of locks leading from Hanwell to the Thames at Brentford

Narrowboat travelling down from Stoke Bruerne, Northants.

Lockgate detail.

Turbulance as water transfers from lock into pound.

Lockgate detail.

Looking uphill across pound towards lock. A figure in shot helps to judge scale when replicating as a model.

Detail of lock cill.

Weight of water in lock chamber holds gates to a watertight fit.  

Moving from lock to pound.

Locks on Grand Union Canal will take two 70ft narrowboats, beam just under 7ft.

Another cill.

Narrowboat and lock keepers cottage.

Paddle gear detail.

Canal water is not always murky and dirty!

The next series of pictures below were taken on the Wey and Arun canal near Loxwood in Sussex.

Restored lock.

Restored lock chamber.

 

Rebuilt bridge.

All that remains of Gennets Bridge Lock.

Lock detail.

Lock in course of complete reconstruction.

No dark satanic mills here but still a canal.

 

The remaining pictures are on the Thames at Richmond.

View of Richmond Bridge from downstream.

Detail of bridge bearing, Chertsey Road bridge at Richmond.

Detail of exotic brickwork - railway bridge overThames at Richmond.

Reading to Waterloo train approaching Richmond.

Waterloo, Weybridge and Windsor train crossing the river at Richmond.

Underneath the arches.

Thames lock at St. Margaret's sized for larger vessels and pleasure steamers.

Over Richmond on final approach to Heathrow.

 

Track Laying with Kato

6966  -   12’’ to the foot cant or super elevation

 

6919  -    ‘N’ gauge cant

 

6921  -    Canting Kato track

 

6923  -    Where to drive fixing pins

6924  -    Cleaning up

6934  -    Securing packing

 

6935  -    Raising ballast between Kato tracks

 6940  -    Final packing

 

 Working with Kato Track

There are two Kato track laying films running on MRTV, ‘Filling in the ballast on Kato track’ and ‘Track laying with Kato’

 

The following pictures supplement some of the points made in these films, in particular track pinning.

 

On my own OO railway I used both Peco and Gaugemaster flexible track laid on 3mm ply cut to fit flush with the sleeper ends  -  on double track the ply runs the full width of the two tracks. Steel dressmaking pins passed through the sleepers and ply securing the two to the baseboard. The heads of the pins were nipped off before driving home flush.

 

Cant was dealt with as described in the films but ballasting – sadly long before Noch/Gaugemaster Ballasted Flexible Underlay became available – was by the traditional ‘wetting/dribbled PVA on to loose ballast carefully smoothed and shouldered’ method. 

 

This railway was started some years before I abandoned the timber industry to join Gaugemaster. When model railways became my working environment the last thing I really wanted to do in my spare time was model railways!  So this railway rests firmly in the early 1990’s and other railway modelling became orientated to sales aids and demonstrations for my job at Gaugemaster.

 

As always skills improve with practice and I now look at this railway and blush at some of the crudities and blunders which over time I shall correct and improve.

 

Back to the pins! – being used to driving pins through sleepers, this was my approach with the Kato track.  As you will see in one of the films I struggled, Kato sleepers are very hard and take pins reluctantly – driving the pins through the ballast part of the moulding was much easier and the black heads of the pins virtually unnoticeable after painting the track.

 

If you have any points to make or need further advice on these topics do please contact me at mailto:support@ashdown.co.uk

 

The pictures were all 6 or 7MB and needed heavy scrunching for the web – hopefully they are not so compressed as to be useless.

Nick

Building Bridges

With two features running on MRTV about bridges I’m making for the ‘N gauge’ modular railway, this seems a good moment to delve into my ‘old pictures’ department.

 

I am trying to find a method of providing high definition images on the Blog so that the detail you need, if you are using them for reference, will be apparent   – some pix are just for general interest, others for modellers who need help with finding an interesting bridge to model.

 

The pix are alongside and are numbered.

 

1.    Richmond Lock on the Thames – it’s actually at St. Margaret’s.

 

2.    Barnes Bridge, over the Thames again, on the Hounslow Loop.

 

3.    As 2 but from Barnes Bridge Station.

 

 

4.    Electrostar crossing the Arun at Ford.

 

 

5.    Richmond Railway Bridge – difficult to get a good view.  Waterloo line to Reading, Weybridge and Windsor.

 

6.    Richmond Bridge – an interesting profile as it climbs from the Middlesex banks, dips a bit, then climbs steeply up the Surrey bank.

7.    Underneath the arches – Peckham.

 

8.    Warning notices on Lyndhurst Way bridge in Peckham.  Notices like this are stuck on most railway bridges these days.

 

9.    Girder detail and two varieties of track support – is there a word for this?

 

10.   Closer to Brixton.

 

11.   In Brixton – plenty of greenery growing in this bridge and building behind.

 

12.   Road bridge with Totley Tunnel’s western portal behind – near Sheffield.

 

13.   Weathered stone bridge over the Derwent in Matlock.

 

The second 13!   Charming little bridge at the top end of Dovedale. Left bank is Staffordshire, right bank is Derbyshire.

 

I shall be doing some deeper delving and hope to have more pictures for you which may help with your modelling.

 

With the weather warming try and get out and about with your cameras and it would be great to see some of your pictures.

 

‘Hope you are finding the programmes informative.

 

 

Nick

 

 

 

 

 

 

Nick's first blog!!

Like my much missed predecessor, Nigel Overington, I find myself in the same position he was in June 2009 - blog's, twitters etc have never been part of my routine either.

My first contact with MRTV was early in 2009 when Nigel approached me at Gaugemaster in Ford, to participate in some of the programmes he was creating.  At that time I was beginning the wind-down period for my planned retirement scheduled for June 2010, managing Bahnhof Europa and building the so-called Alpine Spiral for Gaugemaster's reception area.

I had never 'performed' before in front of a camera and Nigel's friendly approached helped me enormously in not making too much of a fool of myself.

The sad events over Christmas 2009 found me making contributions to MRTV on my own and on retiring from Gaugemaster being approached to carry on Nigel's work at MRTV.

For this first blog I am touching on the 'Warley Show', arguably the biggest and most comprehensive model railway exhibition in the UK.  MRTV were there with a small stand  (we don't need a big one) a plasma screen, three of the N gauge lightweight modules I have been using to demonstrate various scenic techniques - and Elliot and Geoff from Fareham Model Railway Club. 

I took a lot of pictures at the show, but working without a tripod and with the peculiar mixture of high intensity lighting did not help in the quality stakes.  All being well Geoff's pictures will turn out better.  Unfortunately my so-called broadband connection is not fast enough to cope with uploading these so for the moment there are just four pictures in a new album on the MRTV blog. These took the best part of half an hour to upload! - so I shall be finding an alternative way of letting you see the remainder.

The show was a great success both for the layout exhibitors, the trade stands and the demonstrators, one of whom makes the most beautiful and detailed garden and allotment scenes and who I hope to make a programme with later in the year.

We were very pleased with the interest of the many visitors to our stand, including one from Australia who has already started to build his own lightweight modules in OO.  Particularly gratifying was the almost 100% renewal of subscriptions opened at the 2009 show, plus of course the new ones opened at this show.

The pictures I managed to upload are of the Westcliffe layout, a beautifully modelled Victorian seaside railway complete with the sound of seagulls and crashing waves on the beach.

 That is probably quite enough chat for one month.

Moving into the New Year

We're moving into the New Year with some exciting plans here at MRTV. Nick Duxfield is now firmly fixed as Editor on the channel after his retirement from Gaugemaster, and the MRTV team will be bringing you some great layouts and inspiring projects throughout 2011. Don't miss them.

Nigel Overington: An Obituary

The following obituary was written by MRTV presenter Elliott Cowton:

Nigel’s lifelong interest in model railways started in the traditional way with a Hornby Dublo 3-rail layout on a sheet of plywood hinged to his bedroom wall.  On leaving school his chosen career path was to join the Royal Navy through Britannia Royal Naval College, where he was quickly picked up for one of the coveted “Nominated Places” at university.  The pinnacle of Nigel’s Naval career was his appointment as the Commanding Officer of HMS EDINBURGH, an appointment he thoroughly relished.

The tribute at his Thanksgiving Service was lead by a long-time friend and colleague, no less a person than The Second Sea Lord, who told of Nigel’s inspirational style of leadership and infectious enthusiasm for the task in hand when they had worked together some years before, a style that he continued to use throughout his service career, and carried forward when he was forced into early retirement from the Navy by ill health. 

After retirement, and being unable to work in the accepted sense of the word, Nigel’s first foray into the media was as a senior member of the Audience Panel for BBC South based in Southampton, and in this role he played a leading part in helping BBC Radio Solent with its coverage of the various anniversaries that have marked the 60th anniversary of the Second World War.  With this background, and not un-naturally, when the opportunity to take on the editorship of ModelRailway.TV came along Nigel jumped at the chance and brought his unique leadership and enthusiasm style to the role. 

He was the first to admit that, having been an armchair enthusiast for most of his life, he had a lot to learn about putting ideas into practice and, it was because he was on his own learning journey that he was able to be so successful in drawing the best out of those he interviewed, indeed with his encouragement a number of us have gone on to become independent presenters on the channel.

Sadly, all was not well with Nigel’s health.  Although all who knew him agreed that the challenge of editing ModelRailwayTV had given him a new lease of life, he had unknowingly started to develop complications arising from the problems that had originally lead to his early retirement.  He always remained positive about this, seeing it as no more than a temporary setback, however he lost the fight against these problems shortly before the New Year.

Nigel was always intensely proud of his family, their achievements, and their friendship and Ashdown Broadcasting, the MRTV Crew, and the Fareham & District MRC join in sending their sincere condolences to his wife, Hilary, and their daughter Amy.

MRTV goes from strength to strength

Many people have contacted us here at MRTV to express their condolences on hearing the news of Nigel's death, which are most appreciated. Many of you are asking about future programmes now that Nigel, our editor, has passed away. The good news is that our great team of presenters have rallied round and we've some exciting plans for many new programmes coming up. In additon we have a catalogue of programmes featuring Nigel that we wil be releasing over the coming weeks. MRTV is going from strength to strength, adding more and more subscribers, and 2010 promises to be a great year - despite the sad way it has started.

Nigel's Funeral

Nigel's funeral was held last Friday and what a moving experience it was. It was held at the church within the naval dockyard at Portsmouth, and more than 300 people were there. There were many model railway enthusiasts among the navy personnel, reflecting Nigel's illustrious career with the navy and his passionate hobby. The Second Sea Lord, who knew Nigel well, gave a moving tribute. He remembered the times Nigel showed him around the layout in his attic - which, if Nigel was in a hurry, would take as little as four hours!

Sad death of editor Nigel Overington

We are deeply saddened to report the sudden death of Model Railway TV editor Nigel Overington. Nigel passed away just after Christmas, and his funeral takes place this Friday. Although Nigel had been bravely battling health problems for some while, he was always cheerful and passionate about his role as editor of MRTV. He will be sadly missed. A full obituary will follow shortly.