Loss Leader

In the UK we are lucky in that we have such a wide range of model railway magazines available. Not every magazine is to everyones taste, and in a given month there is often quite a bit of overlap between the magazines as they review the same releases etc. When I first got back in to the hobby I was buying most magazines each month, which was an expensive outlay, and money that I could better spend on doing some actual modelling. I eventually settled on British Railway Modelling as the magazine I preferred and so subscribed to save even more money (and got some weathering powders as a free gift). I now buy the other magazines when either the content looks interesting or if I'm travelling and want something extra to read.

On Thursday I couldn't resist picking up a copy of the February issue of Railway Modeller. As well as a number of interesting layout descriptions, there is an intriguing article on making coaches by printing the full colour coach sides, and then there is the free gift: an OO gauge Lineside Hut kit from Ratio. Now I know that the magazine is published by Peco who own Ratio and so they won't have been paying full price for the kits, but I still think they must be losing money on each magazine sold. According to the website of my local model shop the lineside hut kit costs £5.50, yet the magazine only costs £3.95. If they are making any profit at all it has to be just a few pence!

While I'm not currently modelling in OO I also haven't built many plastic kits in a long time (as a kid I used to build Airfix aeroplanes, and I've recently built two Parkside Dundas wagons), so it will be a fun diversion, and I can try out some new painting and modelling techniques without worrying about making a mess of a model I really need. All in all I think buying the magazine this month was money well spent.

Stand On The Rock

Since the last time I showed you an overall view of the layout I've added quite a number of small details and done a little more painting, although I still haven't tackled the access road yet.

The main item of painting has involved colouring the rock outcrops. Given that I've assumed there will be quite a build up of soot and smoke on everything, I've made the rocks quite dark as well. They were painted with a mixture of stone gray and black liquid pigments from Woodland Scenics, and then washed over with a heavily watered down black to pick out all the cracks and crevices. They don't exactly blend in yet, but hopefully once I add grass, trees etc. it will look a little more natural.

The main new detail is the loading dock which incorporates a small crane. The base of the loading dock is also a painted rock face, the idea being that when the railway and factory were built they simply modified the existing landscape to suit their needs. The top surface is modelled as large paving stones (remember that N gauge is 2mm to the foot so each slab is about 2 foot by 1 foot in size) and was a rather laborious hand crafted process. Firstly I cut a piece of thin cardboard to the correct size. I then covered the cardboard in air drying modelling clay. Once dry I then used a cocktail stick to scratch out the joints between the stones. The whole thing was then painted using the same slate gray pigment as the rock faces, before a wash of black paint (not the liquid pigment) was used to bring out the detail. It might have taken quite a lot of work but I'm really happy with how it looks. Of course the first thing I did once it was in place was to drill a hole through it!

While a loading dock would clearly be helpful at the factory I decided to give the workers a further helping hand by fitting a small hand operated crane. This crane is built from a Ratio plastic kit for a yard crane, but I've left out the supplied base and steps (I was going to re-use the steps at the edge of the loading dock but they aren't quite the right size so I'll have to build something else). At the moment it is a little too shiny and new so will need weathering in, but I think it really adds to the scene, and even rotates properly so I can move it out of the way should I have larger wagons in the siding.

The other detail item fixed in the scene is the set of buffers you can just see at the end of the siding. These have actually appeared in a couple of photos on the blog already but I haven't actually mentioned them. Again these are built from a kit, specifically the Peco kit for rail built buffers. They are glued to the track and ensure that no matter how hard I try I can't run off the end of the siding (believe me I've tried, accidentally of course).