Pizza The Scenery

I'm pretty good at excuses for putting outdoor chores to one side and playing trains. Living in deepest mid Wales it's usually a case or rain starts play, but over the bank holiday weekend it's been too hot and sunny for one so delicate as me. Out came card, glue, sawdust and plaster and down went the basic landforms on the pizza. The landscape at the front of the layout was blocked in some weeks ago, but that to the rear is corrugated card. Having tried out both I think I prefer the card; once the ground mix (patching plaster, pva and sawdust) is slapped on then smoothed out with a cheap and nasty paintbrush all the angular edges disappear. It is less messy than hacking polystyrene about and glues take to it better. Anyway here's a few photos of the state of play.

Cowboy and an Indian

I mentioned that some new 009 stock is being built, more accurately it's a mix of new build and a refurbishment of some old pieces. One of the projects that crosses over is a new build of a Darjeeling Himalayan Railway, Sharp Stewart tank on an old Fleischmann mechanism that I've tweaked and tuned. The body is mainly plasticard,though the boiler is a ballpoint pen, a union freebie I think. The chimney shows its origins as a length of brass tube, the dome was a whitemetal casting that I re-profiled. At the front of the engine is the part finished pillar cab, nickel silver wire uprights and the roof from a suitably curved tin can, appropriately for an Indian machine Rajah ground ginger. The dubious materials are concluded by the use of the boiler backhead from an old Airfix L&YR pug.

Though the chassis isn't right (inside frames, level cylinders and wrong slide bars) it does have the right wheel base, and the motor fits into the tanks with a little dimensional fudging. I can't claim anything approaching accuracy for this model, but that's not my target, I'll settle for capturing something of the character and proportion of the real thing.

Back to the future ................

As a young boy I progressed from Hornby 0 gauge tinplate, via the usual sixties Triang in 00 to an interest in 009 no doubt brought about by family holidays to Wales an exposure to the Ffestiniog, Talyllyn, Rheidol and Llanberis Lake railways. The first narrow gauge layout was a Playcraft pre-formed expanded polystyrene foam effort with a loop of track that climbed over itself. All I have left, and possibly the earliest remaining piece of railway kit is this much butchered Decauville loco from the set.

It'll come as no surprise to those who know me that I wasn't one for keeping my toys in pristine condition; I'd take stuff apart to see how it worked, get the Humbrol out if I didn't fancy the colour it came in and feel quite happy cutting bits off or sticking bits on to better suit my purpose. Here we see a result of all this early practice, built to resemble a Neilson box tank, the chassis was a Bachmann n gauge USA dock tank, the body hacked from plasticard and was like most of my early work completed in an afternoon. The wagons are repaints of standard Eggerbahn items and reflect my enduring interest in rust and grime

A few years on and by my mid teens I'd learned a few more tricks. The loco still employs a commercial n gauge chassis, but has a body soldered up from brass sheet. The matching Corris Railway van is like earlier models built from plasticard. The building behind features walls of individually cast plaster blocks, and cut out paper slates overlaid onto a deliberately saggy thin card roof.


It's funny how things come full circle. Since Easter I've been building a 009 'pizza' layout to take to the Corris model railway show this August bank holiday and though there's some new build going on, it has been a rather pleasant exercise to track down all my old models, dust them off and indulge in a bit of repair and restoration. Here's a Kerr Stuart diesel, a scratchbuild on a Bachmann mechanism built a couple of years ago heading some of my old stock round the new pizza.