Our world in miniature, hobbies

Hello, A very busy scene at Hounds Hill. A passenger train at platform 1, bound for Longford Park, whilst Taff tank, waits with the track cleaning guards van, which it will propel to the track maintenance depot at Netherfield, once the Longford train is out of the way. I'm enjoying a very busy modelling time. Although in short supply, natural daylight is at its best Autumn & Spring, so I'm kept really busy. I've put lighting in the engine shed, the cleanest engine shed that you ever did see. I've put lighting in the town hall, where part of the ground floor is Hounds Hill ticket office. The original station building got bombed. Oh yes it did. As did the Great Central line, where the town use the bridge as a walkway to the old nunnery. Oh yes it did. The old station building originally occupied the street level position next to the town hall. It had a lift down the the platform, the bricked up remains of that are adjacent to where the wooden shelter is now at the bottom of the walkway ramp. As passenger numbers are now increasing, it's hoped that a new lift might be installed. Do remember. The town bridge (the bridge to the right in the picture) access is totally free to all Forum members.

Hello, It's misty this morning. If visibility was less than 100 yds, the area manager or loco inspector, if we go back sixty years, could declare double block. That was the same term used for a royal train or special dignitary where basically, it kept moving trains further apart. That terminology featured in the enquiry into the terrible disaster at Harrow seventy years ago. When the London bound train passed Hatch end, it was on a double block as it was foggy, but the Harrow area was almost clear. The driver still missed a vital signal. I was very sad to hear the tragic news regards a Welsh train mishap earlier this week. Very sad. Anyway, any thoughts on rechargeable key ring lights. They might be an option for occasional lighting in some of my buildings but I'm not sure about them overheating. I'm not a cheapo mutt, I hope. I do like innovation. A light is a light. I could go to a specialist model shop, but would finish up buying something quite delicate, with a 500% mark up. The lights that I have used for just £3 each, I could partly dismantle & fit, with very long three aaa, battery life. I've one of them in our pantry, been in there months, left on some nights & still going. I could buy battery cases, then attach leds, but the cost of that would be more than the readymade lights I have used up to now. Anyway, any ideas please?

LED lights use very little power and many of the strings of Christmas tree lights run from battery packs rather than from the mains. There are individual tea lights that use tiny batteries but they flicker to simulate a candle. There might be a still alternative? You have the opposite problem to me. I want a string of flickering candle lights and you want solo still lights. The problem with individual lights is that they need to be turned on and off individually. The problem with string lights is the string. Starting from scratch, you'd put the lights in from below.

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Hello, I've did it. Using a chargable key fob. I don't intend to have loads of lights blazing away. Years ago, town centres were evenings for window shopping, so all well lit, but not nowadays. Most shuttered up. Thank you all so much. The mention of tea lights, I've got a guards paraffin lamp in my lounge that a sometimes use a tea light candle instead of paraffin, but the stick on the wall led light has been in there since last Christmas. Signal boxes were very dim, as the signal man needed to see out. So the only light was at his desk. He needed to see all of his signal lamps, from his box, to ensure that they were all lit. They were still paraffin lamps right up until thirty years ago. I do like a colourful picture, even flood lit like here.

Hello, The staff are busy doing meals at the Wheatsheaf, for this evening. Wednesday evening used to be choir practice time. Sorry about the flood lighting pole. The chapel is literally in a valley. I used to listen to a Sunday morning wireless program in the Fifties, played on a theatre pipe organ in P!ymouth. So I decided to set the chapel lower down. I'm able to achieve that because I don't use a flat base board. The railway is mounted onto an open framework of 2 by 4 timber. Makes it very strong & I can have scenery up or down. The railway itself is nearly all level except for a slight gradient at Grove. I can have valleys or hills with open frames. A bit of carpentry is needed but I'm very pleased with the result. If a flat baseboard is used, like most exhibition layouts, scenery can only ever come upwards. Whereas in reality, the railway stays mostly level whilst the scenery goes up & down. The only area where I use a level board is the fiddle yards, but they are out of sight. I couldn't have Penny Park viaduct or the railway overbridge scene going to Longford. Or the canal which has to be level. I love our railway, but I spend far more modelling time on the scenery. I don't think of it as scenery. For me it's real people in real homes & working in the pickle factory, the fish & chip shop & so on.

I use a nightlight for my pooch. Automatically comes on as it gets dark and turns off in the mornings as soon as it's daylight. They last for ages and never heats up.

Hello Again thank you all for your help in this huge decision of vital importance to the little people in our community railway. After all. They need to see after dark! After my morning coffee meet up, I had this wonderful vision, as a plate of egg & chips came into my mind, so nearing lunch time, the next No57 took me to Cafe Italia for exactly that. A plate of egg & chips. Possibly my favourite Saturday lunch time nosh. Then a wander to our market model stall, as I'm still pondering ideas for the bombed out original Hounds Hill station building. Done correctly, that will finish off that section of our scene, which at present is a bricked up lift shaft entrance. It stands out by its lack of features, since I've put lights in the Town Hall. Please note, the model stall in our market shuts up shop around 2pm, on a Saturday. The proprietor likes to go to exhibitions or sometimes our own Coventry model railway club at the canal basin. Anyway, coming home on bus, a little boy had his super video blow the world up game, whilst a gentleman was looking at his vinyl records that he had just bought. I just had my card kit. There's not much to choose between us, hey! I've still to decide what will be above normal street ground level, so to then put a front face only, bringing the building down to platform level. I cannot rush this. I expect by now, the gent has his HiFi system playing his latest records & the little boy has already exterminated half of the world. I never throw remnants of any of my past kits away. I've full 3D, bits & bobs, as well as bits of card kits, then my own supply of balsa wood. Look at any model railway, & it's easy to identify whose kits are being used & so on. So I try to blend mine to make that kind of identification a bit more challenging. So a bit of mix & match goes on. Visit any town or city that suffered severe wartime destruction, Manchester, Birmingham & Glasgow come straight to mind, where such reconstruction is so real I still want our fiction history to be there. So, my purchase today won't be on the work surface yet. A lot more pondering, a few cups of coffee, maybe another egg & chips before the tools come out of hiding. The proprietor was very impressed with my no wire lighting. Time for a coffee. Gosh, they're working late on a Saturday afternoon at the pickle factory. I hope it's all ligit. I would hate a call from HMS inspectorate to do a revenue investigation! I'm hoping to go to chapel tomorrow morning. The site at the bottom right of the picture is where the original station stood before the blits. (All in my mind that is). So that's why it needs a bit of thought. The pickle factory is mostly a card kit construction from twenty three years ago. As real as I might try & portray this. It's still a big boys indoor toy. Not the outdoor toy that's bounced around the CBS football ground giving Coventry a 3-2 victory.