esngblog

A second batch of layouts from Bexhill, with some interesting ideas.

Bletchinghurst (OO) seems to be at most shows at the moment, but I appreciated a chance to look at it closely, without the barriers, and appreciate some very nice modelling.  Liked the hops!

Egdean (O) has a distinctly wintery feel.  The owner’s first attempt at snow covered ballast was not a success as it went yellow!  It was removed, and a coat of white paint over the ballast did the trick.

So to Compton Fawcett (O).  I liked the way that the small passenger terminus is set slightly above the parcels depot.  It gives credibility to the way things are laid out, and an excuse for two single tracks off to the fiddle yard.

Interchange sidings make good layouts, with plenty of shunting.  Chelwood Exchange (OO) does this well, set in the green diesel era.

Some tidy OO9 modelling in Westhay.

Lastly, Downlands is a fairly typical N gauge ’roundy-roundy’.  I think the challenge in N at the moment is to avoid building another layout like this and doing something a little different.

And Bohetherick Ferry (On16.5); interesting to have a layout under construction, but with some interesting features like the operating swing-bridge.

Having left Bexhill, we trundled along the coast (it’s a long was from Bexhill to Arundel) to visit the Gaugemaster sale.  We were all very restrained with our shopping, but came away with some odds and ends.  Canny man that Mr Apps – offered to buy us another cup of coffee when they were free!!!  At least we were too late for the bacon rolls and avoided another ketchup explosion.

All in all, a very pleasant day out.

A morning (that turned into most of the day) out to Bexhill with Allan and the Derek’s seemed a good idea.  We had a pleasant run down to the show along the leafy, and mainly secondary, roads.  The Bexhill show was well worth the visit, with plenty of good layouts to view.  I saw several layouts there that I had seen before, but behind barriers.  It was good to be able to inspect them close up.  It was a friendly show, too, and I spent some time chatting to some of the layout owners.  As is sometimes the case, I’ll start with a few of my favourites (that has very little to do with quality!)

I loved Rixworth Green (P4).  Southern Railway with light railway leanings and loosely based on the KESR Bodiam station (note castle on backscene.)  Talking to the owner, I was amused to find that he built the layout and then thought about the scenery for seven (!) years, till it clicked and he finished the little line.

Hallam Town is 2mm fine scale and a Minories.  What is there not to like (at least when they stopped trying to run standard N gauge stock on the line!)

I had seen Plant City (HO) before, but it was good to have a long talk with the owner.  Miami based switching, this is a model of a real location.  It is scale width, but compressed in length – and is still a long layout giving a very open feel and room for plenty of industries – and alligators.

Hastings Tramways (OO) is a small end-to-end shuttle, and very well presented.

Portsea (TT) is a familiar layout, but is always worth a look.  A model of Portsmouth Town and Portsmouth Harbour station, there are lots of excellent EMUs to look at, as well as some very well observed scenery.

A well laid out show in several rooms – and a good seating area for refreshments.  We did have a little excitement there, when Mr Apps had an incident with the brown sauce, that exploded over the front of the serving area.  Never a dull moment at ESNG!

Rest of the photos next time.

Thanks, Paul Rowlatt, for letting me post pictures of Redcar model rail, held on 3-4 August.  A bit of a photo-dump, but I’ve gleaned a few layout descriptions from the web….

Fiddle Street Yard (OO).  Note the hinged front that closes to make a travelling box.  Very clever.

Foxton Town (O).

Gresham (OO)

Brotton Mill (OO).  Lovely bridge, though the backscene seems to have suffered slightly!

This Japanese line didn’t get on the video – though Paul was obviously interested!!

Nor this little Swiss diorama of Solis 1902, with the railway under construction.

This YouTube video shows these and other layouts.

[Whoops, title corrected!]

I had the offer of a lift to the Shoeburyness (nearly Southend) MRC layout, but turned it down.  I let Messrs Dawes and Atfield go, and Allan sent me some photos of some of the layouts.  I stayed at home and spent the best part of four hours demolishing a buddleia tree that had given up the ghost.  Cutting things down is really the only gardening that I enjoy – probably the civil engineer in me!

Anyway, back to the layouts (in alphabetical order.)  Elbow Lane (OO) was one layout that I would have gone to see again.  Elbow Lane is a small yard with a short semi-dilapidated platform for shuttle trains – and plenty of interesting Southern Region and 3rd rail stock to see.

Fenwick TMD (OO) follows the trend of modelling modern, yellow, stock.  I wonder sometimes whether the model shops will run out of yellow paint.  I think that I preferred the old red and blue departmental colours.

First of two American layouts was Geeksville (HO.)

Also HO was Goutièrres.  Gouttières was the junction of the Lapeyrouse and Neris-les-Bains line.  A simple little module, and Allan must have missed one of those delightful French railcars that must have been due to run through in a minute.  I do like these simple, immersive, scenes.

Modular American with Los Tanimals (N).  Allan keeps taking these pictures of the end loops.  Must be a hint for me to build some!

Put your teeth in for this one!  Rheilffordd Di-bwyntiau (OO9).  Love the concept!

Ruffles Road (OO).

Upperton (N).

And last, but most definitely not least Ray Taylor and Anna Bass’ White Meadow Quarry (N).  I really like the curved bits to the baseboard that is far more interesting than the usual oblong.

And a final selection from the show.  There were quite a few layouts that I didn’t capture, but I think that I caught all the interesting ones, and for good measure those worth a quick look.

Bocksley Town (N) is a sort of box file layout, but the individual modules are multiples of boxes.

Luke Robert’s Out West (ON30) does what it says on the can and is a cameo of the Colorado narrow gauge.  I don’t really like US narrow gauge wild west layouts (or logging layouts – I sympathize with the trees too much.)  But this little line is compact and neat with a rather fine backscene.

Lambourn (OO) is a model of an atypical GWR branch terminus – it had a lot of race horse traffic.  My picture shows how difficult it can be to hide baseboard joints.  There’s a rather nice 2mm finescale version of this station doing the rounds, too.

Bletchinghurst (OO) seems to be at every show I go to at the moment….

As does Frittenden Road (O). 

Trinity Dock Street Bridge (OO) is yet another familiar line.  I’m never sure about this one.  There’s some lovely modelling and some interesting stock there, but although it’s “grim up north” I’m not sure that Hull was really quite that dreary.  I really feel that a touch of blue in the sky here and there would transform things and the colour would set off the rest of the scene.  (But of course, it’s not my railway.)

St Mellion (OO) had this attractive quayside and steam coaster.  Perhaps it’s all too clean, but I do tend towards an ideal world for my scenery!  (Wot, no fish heads?)

Lenham (OO)

A tidy model of the Wantage Tramway in finescale 3mm (14.2mm gauge).

Ebsworth Street (OO).  Some interesting PW vehicles here.

Queen Charlotte Dock (O).  They’ve made a lot of progress since I last saw this interesting layout, but the soldering iron (and its operator) seemed to be in the same place as last time.

And last but not least, the fascinating Fen End Pit (16mm scale, 32mm gauge.)  A fun little layout, only last in these posts as it had one of the highest stand numbers!!!

And as a bonus, here’s a photo from RMWeb taken from the burger van queue.  Looking closely, bottom right, you can see the ESNG chairman drinking his tea, and even my left arm…. 

So that’s Chatham 2024.  Will I go next year?  Certainly if there is company.  The new exhibition team did a good job, and I’m sure they’ll do even better next year.  I see from RMWeb that they are already investigating bigger and better catering vans!

Having looked at my photographs again in writing these posts, I realised that there were some very good layouts there, and perhaps I have been a little harsh in my comments.  Or perhaps not?  It’s all a matter of personal tastes and interests, I guess.  For many people, a show with lots and lots of layouts, and even better, lots and lots of traders is just wonderful.  I think that I’d be happy with something half the size!

Here we go again with a third set of layouts from the Chatham show…

First, Northport Quay, David Holman’s cameo layout set in County Mayo.  7mm/ft, and real 5’3″ gauge – with handbuilt track to 36.75mm.  Good scratchbuilding, and that crane moves along the quay under its own steam.  Of course the advantage of a prototype like this is that you have to build it yourself, and there’s no worry that someone will make a RTR model just as you finish building yours.

Martin Coombs, The Yard is 7mm scale with standard and narrow gauge, a working radio-controlled gantry crane and lorries.  I was amused by the ‘fiddleyard’ for lorries, used to turn them round for the next trip around the layout.

Something different, with Villefranche-la-Chapelle (HO).  A French shunting yard and adjacent town.

K Street Yard, also in HO, is the American equivalent switching yard.

Chris Bassett’s Hobbs Hill (OO) is a small Southern Region somewhere in Devon.  I liked the operating level crossing gates, and the sound effects from the ice cream van parked next to the crossing.  Lots of good scenic modelling on the layout.

Braughing & Standon (N) is Paul Dunn’s model of part of the ex-GER Buntingford branch.  Buntingford itself is an ideal large branch terminus to model, too.  Lots of lovely scenic work here, showing the train in the landscape – N gauge at its best.

I like Holmshurst, a cameo light railway in O.  If you got into conversation with Ian Burford, the builder told you all about the lovely buildings along the high street backscene, most of which had been businesses run by various relations!

And finally for today (one more to come), there’s Minories (GN) in EM.  Or rather, Not-Minories.  The original EM gauge layout was the correct and compact freezer-esque terminus, but has been extended with an enormous continuous run fiddle yard behind.  It makes things easier for the operators and allows a wider variety of trains, but to me completely wrecks the charm of the original.  But, hey, what do I know about it anyway?

Another selection of excellent layouts from Chatham.  First, Westhouses.  John Morgan’s close-to-scale OO layout of this loco depot in 1980 was a new one to me.  Unlike many shed layouts, it is not crammed with track, and operation was leisurely.  I’m not the greatest fan of diesel shed layouts, but I really liked this one.

I’ve seen Ian Forsyth’s Fence Houses NCB (OO) a lot at shows recently, but it’s an interesting industrial line.  I liked the sidings of coal wagons.  Sometimes simple is impressive?

The Epsom & Ewell club’s Hinksey Yard (N) is a model of the ‘virtual quarry’ close to Oxford.  Although it’s 18′ long, a scale model of the site would come to something like 50′.  And I hate to think what it would cost to populate it with auto-ballasters!  This layout has been around for some time, but stands up very well.

 I rather liked Mike Walker’s Helland Wharf (OO).  Based on a real location on the well-known Wenford branch, this is a working diorama with a single points.  Yet it has bags of character.

Hydraulic heaven in O on Jim McGeachy’s Hazelcombe!  Some of the best diesel classes making wonderful models in the ‘senior scale.’ 

Finally for today, Overlord (OO) has grown from a little 12′ layout to its present 38′.  I think the best thing on this labour of love is not the railways but the wonderful and rather large ship models.