Innehållsförteckning för May 2023 från Model Rail

Masterclass Looking at railways in detail It might be easy to view the pre-Grouping era as the last great time of flamboyancy and pomp on Britain's railways. The reality is more nuanced. As midnight fell on December 31 1922, the end of the 120-plus individual companies was a culmination of a downward spiral faced since the turn of the century, and hastened by the ruin of the First World War. A blueprint for radical change had existed since 1912 following the first threat of war, triggered by the Agadir Crisis in north Africa. That jolted the government to establish a shadow Railway Executive Committee (REC). In the event of war, the REC would effectively take control of the railway companies to enable effective mobilisation of troops and equipment. This ultimately…

Workbench EXPERT MODELLERS SHOW YOU HOW sponsored by HARDER & STEENBECK www.harder-airbrush.eu For most of its life, the railway at Hemyock was dominated by the dairy. Naturally, this meant my miniature re-creation would also have to feature the facility in a way that grabbed the viewer's attention. As is frequently the case when recreating a real prototype, I soon discovered just how much space would be required to model the dairy complex to scale – basically, rather a lot! Certainly far more space than was available at the terminal end of the layout's baseboard. With the space limitations in mind, therefore, I would have to use a bit of modeller's licence and create something to suit the available footprint. Yet, it was vital to recreate the character of the real…

‘EM’ GAUGE LAYOUT LOCHTY Lochty. It's not somewhere you'll be keen to go on your holiday. It's not a town or even a village, just a settlement, and if you were to look at it on a map it would appear as though the extent of it is one farm. Not exactly prime real estate for a railway, but in a very quiet area of East Scotland, a thunderous LNER ‘A4’ class ‘Pacific’ could be found travelling up and down a three-quarter mile stretch of track. The history of John Cameron, Union of South Africa and the Lochty Private Railway is one with which some of you may be familiar, but before that there was another railway at Lochty and it is here that Andy Cundick has based his ‘EM’…

Reviews Announced late last year, to some surprise, these models depict a true pioneer of electrified railways in the UK. Produced as a joint enterprise between Locomotion Models, Rails of Sheffield and Heljan, five versions are available, depicting both of the two North Eastern Railway (NER) ‘ES1’ Bo-Bos across different stages in their long careers. Courtesy of the kind folks at Locomotion Models, we have been given a pair of samples to review, depicting No. 1 in early NER lined green (1908-1923), which is a model exclusive to Locomotion Models, along with BR black 26500, a Rails of Sheffield exclusive. The unusual steeple-cab arrangement of the ‘ES1’ makes for an eye-catching sight, being more readily associated with Continental electric traction. But anyone with an interest in Tyneside railway operations will…

◆ GAUGE ‘TT:120’ ◆ MODEL • Hornby TT9004 ‘S&C’ signal box (£27.99) • TT9002 ‘S&C’ Dent Station (£42.99) • TT9003 ‘S&C’ Waiting Room (£19.49) • TT9009 Platform Ramp (£12.99) • TT9008 Straight Platform (£15.99) ◆ AVAILABILITY Direct from Hornby Web www.hornby.com I couldn't help but smile when I heard that Hornby's first foray into ‘TT:120’ resin-cast buildings would include my namesake station, Dent. The enduring popularity of the Settle-Carlisle line makes it a prudent choice and, with versions having appeared in the ‘OO’ Skaledale range over the years, Hornby obviously had all the necessary research material on hand. Hornby's emerging range of ‘TT:120’ buildings does not carry the Skaledale branding, perhaps to avoid confusion with ‘OO’ products and a variety of lineside and town structures are in the pipeline. For…

Prototype: LMS/BR Class 502 two/three-car EMU Gauge: ‘00’ Proposed by: Ged Brannen, by email What is it? Built by the LMS at its Derby Works, the 630V DC third-rail units replaced elderly Lancashire & Yorkshire electric stock on the suburban services out of Liverpool Exchange. Serving destinations to the north of the city centre, to Southport and Ormskirk, the new trains entered service from 1940, operating as a mix of two-car and three-car units. Equipped with air-operated sliding passenger doors, the ‘502s' were pioneers of many facets of electric suburban trains that have since operated in the UK. Buffers and conventional drawgear were installed to the outer ends of the Driving cars, allowing inter-working with services from outside of the electrified system. While similar to the Wirral-based Class 503 EMUs…

Arriving a few weeks ahead of schedule, our exclusive Ruston & Hornsby 165DE 0-6-0 locomotives are now in stock and ready for service. Built for BR's Western Region in the late 1950s for use by the Permanent Way Department, they became known as Permanent Way Machines, or ‘PWMs’ for short. Operating largely within engineers' yards or out on site during track re-laying works, the small fleet of locomotives was spread across much of the region. Examples remained in service into the 1990s and a few have survived into preservation. Our model is based on PWM651-654 (later 97651-4), with the pioneer PWM650 featuring several differences from the ‘production’ batch. Produced in association with Kernow Model Rail Centre and Heljan, Model Rail is offering eight exclusive versions, covering the full range of…

Opening the box The latest locomotive project for Lionheart Trains will be the GWR ‘55XX’ 2-6-2T, a versatile mixed traffic locomotive built primarily for branch line operation. The GWR built 100 examples between 1927-29, with over a dozen being fitted with autotrain apparatus by BR in the early 1950s, for push-pull operations in South Wales. The tooling was at an early stage when the project was announced in March, but the plan is to provide for various detail differences, including two different smokebox door types and sandboxes. A magnetic cab roof will permit easy access to the footplate and other highlights include folding cab doors and a firebox flicker effect. A heavy die-cast metal chassis will house a powerful motor and a whopping 18 versions have been announced, in various…

Recently, I've rediscovered my love for weathering steam locomotives, so it was a joy to work on this Bachmann GWR ‘City’ class 4-4-0, having had it on display for the past couple of years. No. 3708’s name, Killarney, has links to my Irish family, hence why it's had pride of place on my bookshelf for so long. Furthermore, I've been meaning to add a little extra finesse to an already handsome model for some time and, with the ‘Big Four’ era on our minds this month, there seemed no better time to get stuck in. My mission was to recreate that distinctive, highly polished look to the green paintwork, suggesting a few years of being cleaned regularly by hand with cotton waste and oily rags. But a pristine finish was…

Workbench EXPERT MODELLERS SHOW YOU HOW sponsored by HARDER & STEENBECK www.harder-airbrush.eu TOP TIP Do not smother a piece of Wrinkle Rocks with glue before attaching it to the landscape as it will lose its 3D effect. Instead, attach the pieces lightly to the landscape with dabs of glue in just a few places, allowing the material to ‘float’ on the landscape It's a fair bet that most of us have used ‘brick papers’ at some point on our modelling journeys. It might be easy to be sniffy about these two-dimensional materials, when readily available textured plastic card (for instance) provides lifelike relief, but a certain level of skill is needed to get effective results. Indeed, contemporary use of high-guality photographs now enables a highly realistic finish (eg old stock…

KNOW YOUR STUFF The ‘Green Diesel’ era should, in theory, be one with few variations in the application of BR's ‘standard’ locomotive green livery. However, with so many different locomotives within the Type 2 power range, each with its own aesthetics and profile, BR took the view that the ‘standard’ livery should be tailored to suit the character of each individual class. As a result, off-white, cream or pale blue bodyside stripes were applied to some locomotives, while others gained a two-tone green scheme. Later would come the obligatory yellow warning panels, applied in all manner of shapes and sizes during the 1960s. A revised font style and the emergence of the ‘double arrow’ logo would soon follow, but those elements are beyond the remit of this article. Instead, we'll…

Reviews Produced exclusively for Ellis Clark Trains by Darstaed Finescale, the range of LNER Thompson mainline carriages was reviewed in the January issue of Model Rail (MR308). Indeed, the models proved popular enough to take second place in the ‘O’ gauge Rolling Stock category of Model Rail’s Model of the Year awards. Having previously assessed passenger carrying vehicles (an RTO and BCK), we now have the pleasure of casting our eyes over a pair of Full Brake (BG) coaches in lined BR maroon and Rail blue liveries. Like the earlier stock, the models come packaged in lovely foam-lined boxes and the feeling of quality doesn't end there. Each coach tips the scales at 960g, thanks to the cast metal chassis and bogies, plus the etched metal sides. They feel pretty…

The Great Western Railway was renowned for its policy of standardisation. Why keep re-inventing something when you can design it once and use it over and over again? It is a philosophy which applies equally to manufacturers making models of GWR locomotives and rolling stock. Thus, hot on the heels of Rapido Trains' GWR ‘Iron Mink’ vans, comes the four-plank open wagon for which the GWR and Rapido used the same chassis. From the 1880s and into the early 20th century the GWR built tens of thousands of woodenbodied open merchandise wagons, starting with a one-plank version and developed by gradually adding an extra plank to the body. The Rapido model is described as Diagram 021 which was the designation given to 18,700 four-plank examples which, from the 1927 Board…

Opening the box News A number of painted samples of Heljan's re-tooled ‘O’ gauge Class 55 ‘Deltic’ were on show at the recent MIOG exhibition, revealing an enhanced level of fine detail over previous releases. A few areas still reguire tweaking slightly prior to production getting under way, but initial signs are very promising. Also on show were advance samples of the upcoming Class 58 and electro-diesel ‘73’, along with an example of the latest run of Class 52 ‘Westerns’, which will be available in the coming months. DAPOL TO OFFER GWR AUTOCOACH IN ‘OO’ Announced at the London Festival of Railway Modelling, at London's Alexandra Palace, Dapol will be producing a high-fidelity replica of the GWR's 1907-built fleet of Autocoaches. Based on six coaches, Nos. 36-41, that were built…

With Accurascale's first steam-outline locomotive, the GWR ‘Manor’, due to arrive in the coming months, the manufacturer has turned its attention to the Great Eastern Railway Class J67/68/69 ‘Buckjumper’ 0-6-0T. Dating back to the end of the 19th Century, the GER's 0-6-0Ts proved themselves useful for all manner of shunting work and further batches were built (or rebuilt) over the ensuing decades, well into LNER days. Accordingly, the history of the ‘Buckjumpers’ is complex and Accurascale has set itself an ambitious task to create a broad suite of tools, allowing for countless detail variations and changes visited upon the classes between 1890-1962. A diecast metal boiler has been specified, to add extra ‘heft’ and the level of detail is expected to be high. A magnetic cab roof will allow easy…

Frustratingly, it was the day after last month's issue went off to the printers that I finally unearthed my missing fine-tipped calligraphy pen and white ink, which I'd been searching for over the previous couple of weeks. This is the means with which I prefer to add lettering and numbers to scruffy old freight and Departmental wagons, as pristine decals often look incongruous. Indeed, all of the prototype images that informed my model showed that the ‘Salmon’ wagons had been branded fairly roughly with a pot of paint and brush, presumably during minor repair work. Adding the finishing touches took just a few minutes. A final light layer of weathering was applied, via an airbrush, to tone down the white letters and numerals, using a well-thinned generic ‘dirt’ mix of…

‘O’ GAUGE LAYOUT SHERTON ABBAS There are a few main reasons why modellers choose to model in the larger, 7mm scale. Some do it because their eyesight is not as good as it once was and the larger scale allows them to still enjoy the hobby, and some love the extra details you can add that the smaller scales don't allow. This was the case for Dave Stone, who got frustrated with not being able to see the brake detail he'd spent hours working on in ‘EM’ gauge, and decided that the time was right to make the jump to ‘O’ gauge finescale. “I certainly wasn't prepared for quite how much space you'd need in 7mm scale, but once I'd detailed the first wagon I was hooked, and the 4mm…

Workbench EXPERT MODELLERS SHOW YOU HOW sponsored by HARDER & STEENBECK www.harder-airbrush.eu Public playgrounds have been a feature in Britain since 1859 and were a development of a concept first conceived by German psychologists Their role in developing children's physical and mental skills is as relevant today as then. It was the pandemic that reminded us of the humble, yet important, facets of our daily lives. The image of children's playgrounds cordoned off and infested with weeds was one of the many enduringly sad images from 2020. Children's interests have varied massively over the years, but communal play equipment has remained a fundamental part of our society. It is a fair bet that there will be at least one in almost every village, town and certainly cities around the country,…

When it comes to planning a layout, how many of us will use a tunnel or overbridge to disguise the entrance to storage sidings or to act as a suitable exit ‘stage left’? I'm very lucky in that my layout was built within a set of stables which had internal walls, naturally separating the different parts of the layout. Do you think that the presence of these stables – and their potential for a railway room – had any influence on me buying the property? Oh no, it was for the view and local amenities – honest! Anyway, with my large ‘O’ gauge circular layout going through numerous walls, there was an obvious need for several tunnels or bridges to be used as scenic breaks and to take the viewer's…

Reviews It feels wholly appropriate to begin our assessment of Hornby's new ‘TT:120’ range by casting our eyes over a train set, given that most modellers will have been introduced to this hobby via a box full of track, a controller and a train. Leading the roll-out of Hornby's first phase of ‘TT:120’ releases is a pair of train sets, both with an LNER theme. Kindly supplied direct from Margate is The Scotsman set, featuring the familiar lines of an ‘A1’ 4-6-2 in LNER Apple green livery. However, it doesn't portray that most famous of Gresley's ‘Pacifies’, Flying Scotsman, but a close relative instead, along with a trio of Pullman carriages. The other set on offer, The Easterner, consists of a BR green Class A4 ‘Pacific’ and three maroon BR…

Reviews Having initially released a ‘OO’ version of the Class 33/2 in early 2007, Heljan has now re-tooled the ‘Slim Jim’ Type 3 to boost the level of detail and offer an authentic, as-built version for the first time. Five new ‘33/2s’ are being offered in original condition, four in various iterations of BR green livery, plus an early Rail blue version. A further six ‘33/2s’ in later condition are also now available, sporting liveries from the late 1980s and 1990s BR era. For review, Heljan kindly supplied D6596 in BR green with wraparound yellow ends. As with Heljan's recently revamped Class 33/0 and ‘33/1’, there are marked improvements over the original tooling, which are immediately visible. The bogies and underframe detail has been greatly enhanced from the original 2007…

Reviews Hornby's Class 60 remains one of the Margate company's best diesel-outline models, despite being around for almost two decades. Having been an ever-present feature of Hornby's annual release programmes, many different examples of the 100-strong Class 60 fleet have been offered over the years, in a range of liveries. However, to mark a significant improvement to the model's electrical ‘heart’, Hornby has chosen to reproduce the first two ‘60s’, 60001 Steadfast and 60002 Capability Brown, both in original BR Railfreight Sector livery. While ‘002’ carries Petroleum sector markings, ‘001’ is adorned with Construction sector logos and it's this latter version that we have for review. Little has changed outwardly from the existing Hornby Class 60 tooling, with the same attractive profile, etched radiator grilles (with separately moulded interior components…