Tag Archives: model railway

Shepton Mallet redux

It’s the start of the school holidays, so for the 19th time in 20 years Maxine and I went on our annual pilgrimage to the ‘New Wine’ church conference.  Once again, there were 12,000 people camping on the Bath & West Showground … Continue reading →

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Almost a model?

A picture from the BBC website, of derailed engineering trains in Scotland.  This looks remarkably like our ESNG layout on a bad day (and I suspect most modellers will identify with the incident!) According to the article: Two trains carrying ballast … Continue reading →

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London Bridge rebuild

Our local paper the Sorry Error, whoops, Surrey Mirror published these aerial photos of the London Bridge rebuilding project.  This rebuild will increase the capacity of the through tracks that feed the Thameslink lines through to north London.  It will … Continue reading →

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Up the Junction

Just before we went on holiday, I made my last visit to offices in Kew Bridge, reviewing designs of the river crossings for a gas pipeline in Turkey.  This has been a regular trip, from Redhill to Clapham Junction and … Continue reading →

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Five things you can do to be happier right now

Most people are wrong about the things that will make them happy.  Professor Paul Dolan, speaking at the Hay Festive, said it’s actually quite simple.  I’ve adapted them for model railway use – I think they still work! Listening to a … Continue reading →

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Exhibitions, are they worth it?

Julias Modelopolis  (Julia makes marvellous 2mm fine scale models, with some 3-D printing thrown in for good measure) recently commented on taking your layout to an exhibition.  The money comments were….. Browsing the interweb forums I always stumble across people … Continue reading →

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Less is more – two interesting examples

I used to follow a blog called ‘The Staging Yard’, following a UK based modeller’s trials at building a US layout, until it went quiet in 2014.  Reading RMWeb the other day, I saw that the blog had reappeared and was being continued … Continue reading →

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Long and winding road – narrow and wide

One feature of the ‘Shed’ era that I forgot was an interest in narrow gauge railways.  A few Model Railway News articles were supplemented by a copy of Don Boreham’s seminal ‘Narrow Gauge Railway Modelling’ and a history of the Lynton … Continue reading →

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Long and winding road – the shed

In the mid-sixties, I was in need of the larger back bedroom in our 1930’s 3-bedroom semi, so my father invested in a SHED.  This 9′ x 8′ empire was carefully built by my father, saturated with wood preservative, insulated … Continue reading →

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Long and winding road – beginnings

A while back, I posted some photos of some of my old kit and scratch built models.  Those posts didn’t include the path that I took to get from there to here.  I was thinking about this in the context … Continue reading →

Posted in Inspiration, Jon's layout ramblings, Weird and wonderful | Tagged , , | 10 Comments