News from your model shop - modelling summer

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Don't forget to read our latest modelling tips and unboxing videos located at the bottom of the newsletter.

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Railway song of the week

James Coffey is an award winning writer and singer of children's songs. Like all good children's songs, they can also be enjoyed by adults. Here is "I'm an engineer" to prove our point:

Most railway modellers will model a particular era or location, but not many will have considered anchoring their railway to a particular season, and those that do, often opt for the challenge of recreating winter scenes, and why not? but what if you want to indicate a summer scene? in this case, you may well be wondering what kind of things you can do to achieve it.

Apart from the weather, there are a huge amount of differences in the world around us giving little clues that summer is upon us, trees now have fruit, not blossom; farmers are shearing sheep and making hay bales, combine harvesters are starting to make an appearance in the fields and flowers are everywhere from carefully cultivated gardens and planters to wild varieties painting the countryside with colour.

All of these things can be successfully modelled in OO gauge. When it comes to vehicles, there's always a wide variety of agricultural machinery, tractors and combine harvesters to choose from. Hay bales are no problem either with ready-to-go varieties making the job easy and static-grass type hay for use by more advanced modellers. Trees can be sought with fruit added or in special packs containing just the fruit to be used with existing trees or to create a realistic sprinkling of fallen fruit on the ground and flowers can be represented using a special scatter or models of individual plants.


With the scenery taken care of, you can further hint at summer using a variety of cameo scenes. Try adding some sunbathers to your park, an ice cream stall to your high street, some tourists to your platforms, a harvest scene to your countryside, some leisure activities to your water feature or back on the farm, some shearers hard at work giving the sheep a hair cut.

• What are sanding pads?
• What is polystyrene?
• What colour should I paint my model pond?
• What are BAA wagons?
• What is a signal box?

• How do I clean metal shavings from modelling files?
• How has the role of the brake van evolved throughout the history of the railways?
• What is the difference between Peak Classes 44, 45 and 46 locomotives?
• What is a fogman?
• Is satin paint the same as Semi-Gloss?

You can access all the unboxing videos by visiting this page or simply click on the link called "videos" on our website.