Stock design 01: Intermodal

For the self-respecting modern, customer-orientated narrow gauge railway with freight ambitions and one eye on the bottom line, the ‘Must-have’ accesory is a container wagon. Transporter wagons or rollboks have their very useful place, but they are specialised and complicated bits of kit, whereas the good old ISBU container is simple and needs pretty normal [...]

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Spitzenwald Timetable

I should be making KÖB Railcar 2.0 at the moment, but unfortunately the loft ladder is stopping me. You may recall that the loft in our new apartment now houses the model making desk, which is wonderful and I’m happily messing it up, but unfortunately the ladder to the loft (installed -at a guess- in [...]

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What now? Episode 4: Back to the future.

Before I went on to do other things in my late teens I made three models: ecah one was smaller than the last. The first was a tailchaser called ‘Howden’ based on a plan out of a Hornby catalogue which was 6′x4′ and sat in a corner of my bedroom like a small elephant: the [...]

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Now what? episode 3: Urban Joker

So I see a picture of a model without a fiddle yard. I know it’s not a new concept, but it seemed interesting, so I sketched up a couple of ideas: Here’s the ‘Joker’:

I originally thought of this as a 3mm scale, 9mm gauge shunting model with several industries and a locomotive shed. The idea [...]

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Now what? Episode 2: Variations.

I liked the ‘Schwarzwald’ design so much that I decided to try a variation:

I was idly wondering what a waterside model would be like, so that, for example, a line built to bring in tourists was extended to a small harbour to serve a ferry parhaps, or coastal/river shipping. To make a scenic break, I [...]

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Now what?

Now the dust is beginning to settle, for the time being anyway, so I can make tentative thoughts about modelmaking again.
Frankly it’s high time I built anything, but a layout would be favourite. It’d be an incentive to start stockbuilding again, and give me a focus on what I’m going to build on some stock, [...]

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Container doodle

Over the last week I’ve been carrying this piece of paper about and doodling designs for a container wagon whenever I’ve had a moment to spare. Unfortunately this made the paper a bit dog-eared, but that’s life. At least it gave me something to stave off the withdrawal, as well as hopefully giving me a [...]

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Lowliner.

Back in the mists of time someone’s granddad realised that if you make a standard sized box you can fill it full of anything from rocking horses to paper clips, put it on a truck or a train, and when you came against a barrier said truck or train couldn’t cross, like the Atlantic, you [...]

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Downsizing 2…

In which I don’t announce a change to 1:87 scale.
So I’d almost completed the railcar, and as is fairly common for me, I get distracted by something else, namely building a 1:55 scale 40′ container, as you do. The nice people over at the MTI Forum had put a print of container sides with [...]

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Bustitution?

This isn’t a picture of my progress over Christmas, unfortunately. It’s one of the presents the boys got from a family friend. One of the advantages of 1:55 is that I’ve a great source of ready made road vehicles from Siku. The range is of limited use to most narrow gauge enthusiasts because it is [...]

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