Prior to Christmas I officially farewelled my former HO scale Australian shelf layout Philden Beach. As you read this post it is probably being set-up in its new home in Newcastle, NSW which is ironic given my North Coast themed layout will have travelled from one end of the North Coast line in Brisbane to the other. The cement unloading siding for the cement hoppers that never arrived. My final look at Philden Beach was of an empty yard with the balance of my rollingstock now on eBay. Selling the layout, I now know how an artist must feel to watch a prized painting walk ..read more

Welcome to a bonus episode of Rusty's Quality Used Trains, where we sell quality models that have only ever had one little old lady owner who only ever ran them after Church on Sundays... Well not quite. But instead, here's a selection of the final secondhand HO scale models I weathered over the Christmas Holiday break that are ready to find a new home. It's been a fun ride over the course of the past few years to offer these for sale through my eBay shop, but with the time that it takes to paint and weather these coming to an end, and thousands of dollars tied up in a wardrobe full of model ..read more

Deciding to move on my HO layout Philden Beach has been purely a size issue. As you can see, the 3.3 metre long layout overwhelms our apartment's small lounge room, and there simply isn't enough wall space anywhere else in our apartment to accommodate it. No-one ever posts photos of the unseen footprint a model railway requires, only the stand-out scenic features that they have worked so hard to model. So, I thought I would share some thoughts as to my experience as an apartment-sized modeller of the past 10 years. This is Philden Beach in its final state. It is now for sale a ..read more

With Christmas now only weeks away, it appears I came good on my promise to have my Christmas themed layout ready in time for the festive season, (even if it was a year late). So, where's Santa, I hear you ask? Well, he's still working his way through the naughty list. In the meanwhile, here's an update of my efforts to position the structures in place ahead of the layout coming upstairs into our apartment. The Hornby Skaledale buildings were both wrapped in cling wrap so I could apply my snow slurry against the corners of each building. This enables me to lift them up when it comes t ..read more

Winter is here! At least in the Northern Hemisphere where snow at this time of year is just a part of life. Here in sunny Brisbane, Queensland, Australia, (best city in the world IMO), I'm going to have to settle for making it snow in model form. After all, Bryn Nadolig is Welsh for Christmas (Nadolig) Hill (Bryn), so it stands to reason that this art piece becomes something that resembles a postcard scene from a part of the world I've never even been to, while trying to model the white stuff that I've never even seen! As it is only a couple of weeks until my wife and I take a short holiday t ..read more

Some people might think I'm strange for taking this approach, (friends included). But this post becomes the point where I stray from my past railway modelling approach and instead introduce some artistic elements into this little project. Starting with the railway station platform, which was hand-carved from a series of balsa wood strips and painted in a mosaic-like pattern to bring some warmth into what will eventually become a whimsical winter scene. The idea is to break up the bleak grey of the rocky Welsh landscape and slate retaining walls. Although it would be more prototypically ac ..read more

Since running the first train around Bryn Nadolig a few weeks back, there's been a flurry of work on the layout to complete the scenery and painting. As life would have it, this OO-9 layout project had lingered in a state of slumber since around this time last year, with all the rollingstock, structures and materials stored carefully in a wardrobe awaiting their call to action. So, when a rare chunk of spare time presented itself over the past month, I didn't waste an hour of daylight in getting this layout visually complete and safely back upstairs. Normally speaking, modelling the landscap ..read more

The only way to test the track and officially run the first train on Bryn Nadolig, was to wire the layout and connect the feeder wires to the DCC plate that I had pre-built in one corner of the layout's fascia. To do that, I had to temporarily remove the NCE receiver panel from Philden Beach, which was as simple as unscrewing the plate and removing the plug that houses the positive and negative feeder wires. Transferring the NCE Power Cab system from one layout to the other was easy. With the NCE panel now screwed into the pre-built slot in the corner of Bryn Nadolig, (see post breaking groun ..read more

With the warmer weather now upon us in sunny Queensland, it seems that weathering season is over for another year. Having just finished weathering the last of a fellow modeler's collection that I was helping him to sell, the air compressor downstairs in my garage has fallen quiet once more. I have no more models to weather for now. Until the weather becomes more milder and I find some more second-hand models to buy, repair and weather, it looks like I have the rest of the year to put my modelling time towards some projects for my own benefit. So, without further ado, here is a sample of the ..read more

There's a rainbow over Philden Beach as my part in its story prepares to come to an end. Plans. We can make them. We can break them. And we can change our mind along the way. Just like the concrete plant from my original Philden layout that I had been planning to resurrect on the shores of Philden Beach. Ahead of preparing Philden Beach to be offered for sale, I did a full 180 degree turn and instead converted the now empty bus depot to an industrial storage compound for one simple reason. The view. Exhibit A - with the concrete plant in place for a final test fit. E ..read more