Railex 2014. Palmy edition

Just to make a quick note, The Palmy Railex (not to be confused with the Wellington Railex of the same name) is on the 12th and 13th of July.
I'll be there with the usual suspects (assuming I'm allowed) demonstrating how to make pointwork again. Its the skill I bring to the table.

If you are in the area, drop in and say Hi.

Twice a month

Well, its been a while hasn't it. I wonder what its doing to my page hits...

Things have been a might trying at work this month. That and a few other things have meant that there has not been much blogging done.I've had yet more ideas for layouts from the comfort of my armchair, but nothing has made it to the work bench. I have been distracted somewhat by a small diversion to another scale as well. I have however got back into making beer, so the time has not been completely wasted.

The latest plan is  based on a photo out of the latest Railfan (which continues to be a source of inspiration despite its detailed discussion of the Auckland region rebuild).

Please acknowledge 'Sir George Grey Special Collections, Auckland Libraries, 35-R965' when re-using this image. And done

A nice simple track layout with an interesting split level and no massive banks of ferns in sight. I think it could be made into a nice wee shunting layout, with the only problem being an empties in/loads out set up. Which leads me to my next point.

Something I have noticed is that all the track plans I have come up with are end to end layouts, with no provision for roundy-roundy running. Now I don't have a problem with this as running a train in circles for an hour or so bores me to tears. However I feel that I'm in a minority of 1 in the NZ120 community. Possibly why I'm having a flirt with a larger scale.

'Yes, I've gone mad...'

Down to the sea in boats.

When building a model wharf, there are several items that are vitally important.
First of course is the wharf. Running a close second is a ship of some sort.

Now, finding a model ship has never been an easy job as the common scales for plastic models tend to be 1/2 the size of NZ120. Fortunately we are rescued by modeling techniques form early last century. Yes folks, card models.
Interestingly enough there are still a few European manufactures (or printers if you will) of these sort of kits. I have built a few of the model castles over the years which build up to good models for war gaming. I have rescaled them by using a photocopier which can get you up to A3 size. I then use the parts as the basis for a model. 

I was looking for a ship similar to that seen in the background of this picture.

 Scanning around for turn of the century steamship models was turning up a blank until happened on a model of the SS Californian in 1:400 scale. Fortunately for me (if not for a few others), this ship was famous for not coming to the aid of the Titanic as it sank, despite seeing the signal flares.
The model is purchased as a set of down loadable PDF's, which can then be printed out. This means that they can be scaled to whatever size you like/need.

The card model can be built as either a full hull or a waterline model. I will probably do it in between as the ship in the picture is quite high out of the water. Size wise, its going to come out about 1100mm long. Possibly a bit on the big side, but then you can think about doing something like this.

( I notice that I've been rather remiss in doing blog updates. hopefully things will get back to normal now that its winter and the garden is quiet)