Our world in miniature, hobbies

Morning Philip, I feel privileged to be shown into ones living room to view such a layout and having just viewed your gallery again can see all the new work you have done. Thank you.

During which period was there a garden layout on the corner of St Ives Road Philip?

Could I just add to your post Dutchman - the one in Burnaby Road too ?

Hi Dutchman, Yes, a really lovely one. I think the address was Belgrave Rd, but it was on the corner. I had relatives in St Ives Rd, & often saw the trains running on Saturday afternoons. They had some trams too.

Thanks Philip, whenabouts was that?

Hi Dutchman, The one at the end of St. Ives Rd, was there until about 1963. The Burnaby Rd much later. I used to be a member of the railwaymans club on the first floor attached to the station. A regular for me was meeting my son after his school on a Friday afternoon for a good old fashioned train-spot at Coventry. Several spotters would meet there, almost like clockwork on a Friday evening. I gave a lift home to one of them who lived in Burnaby Rd. He invited me several times to see his OO model in his home as well as his radio contolled live steam in his garden. That would be thirty years ago, though. Time flys, hey!

Ah, I see. Thanks Philip

Hi all The canal through Longford Park now in use. Plenty of work still to do, including the wharf buildings & the arched retaining wall. Hope you like. Brooks & streams are not easy to incorporate in a model as unless they are engineered, they tend to meander all over the place. In the picture, the canal goes under the railway & emerges the far side (which cannot be seen other than the top of the bridge parapet) where there is also a brook. Unless ground is grazed by animals, most brooks & streams remain hidden under growth. In real life, the river running through Longford park to-day has been engineered to follow a well defined course which makes it rather ornamental, which is nice for parkland but looks toy-like on a model, so, that is why I have I have incorporated another length of the Coventry canal on our railway, which looks better in an engineered location.

Hello Philip....Nice to see your train set up, tell me do you make your own buildings up? have you ever thought about incorporating David Winter cottages,or even Lilliput Lane into your scenery,or would they not be to scale? i suppose scale is very important when building one of these projects....anyway happy modelling Philip and i look forward to seeing more in the future

It looks great Philip the City Council ought to employ you in designing our town and the railway system.

Hi & thank you, both, What I use Norm, depends on what is available & the price. On the railway are a mix of card kits, ready made 'scaledale', airfix kits, linka plaster moulds & even modified Hornby. Also the windmill in the distance is 'Lilliput'. It is half the size that it should be for oo, but helps to create distance in the same way as an artist will scale a picture. The romany caravan is also Lilliput, but that is nearly the correct size. My Pam bought them both from Owen Owen when they were closing down. Years ago, I was shown a template gauge used by cartoon artists when they convert a model for use in a picture or film. I always have that at the back of my mind when I am trying to create a depth of acres, when in actual fact I only have a couple of feet. Hope that helps. Thanks so much for asking. ps. The bridge lining & king-stones on the new canal bridge is a toilet roll holder, & the bridge parapet the other side in the same picture is reduced by about fifteen percent in scale size so that it makes me really think that the canal is really going right under the railway. It is only doing that in my mind!

Just perfect Philip. What I really want to know is - what are you going to do when you run out of room ?

Hi Dreamtime The model now occupies two walls of the room to there furthest extent. Any further intrusion will need domestic planning permission, as my piano & keyboard stuff will need to go elsewhere & I like my neighbours too much to put that in the garden!! Even when Longford is so called complete, older card kit buildings on the model will need upgrading so I will not run out of jobs yet. If there is one thing that I would like to push with this hobby, is, whatever the size of project, get something running, or else interest is lost in a sea of plans & bare wood. I learnt that from my being a 'daddy' build a railway days. There is a pic of my son's railway in my gallery from thirty years ago. Thank you again for your lovely comments.

Hello Philip, I have checked back but can find no trace of what i am going to ask! Could you please step back and take an overall view of your layout, with what you have just said, that will be two pics. I am sure everybody else would like to see them too.

Hi scrutiny, I will load five pics going from left to right. I will delete them later so as to save space. Pictures now deleted. The long wall is sixteen feet & the end is ten feet. I will delete them in a week & put a couple of non flash slow pics up onto my gallery.