Scattergun Theories and experiments in realism from a butterfly mind.

Neil

Western Thunderer
Usually I bung all the not Morfa stuff in 'distractions' but I thought I could tie a load of stuff up more neatly in a separate thread. Some time back you may remember this HO CSD shunter.

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You might even remember why. For some time I've been building narrow gauge trains in 009 which bear a likeness to, or capture the spirit of their real life inspiration rather than be an accurate scale model. Here's my interpretation of a Howra - Amta Railway Sharp Stewart which Illustrates the point.

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Though it looks quite like the real thing, it has been shortened quite significantly to fit the dimensions of the commercial chassis I used. It seems that in the narrow gauge world such things are tolerated more than would be the case if it was a model of a standard gauge prototype. The CSD shunter was my first attempt to see if a caricature could cut it in the less relaxed world of standard gauge. Judging by the comments made I've got away with it, so what next?

At this point several strands of thought converged. I'd been fooling around with the Hornby platform shelter and come up with this Col. Stephens-esque structure.

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I found a similar vintage Hornby four wheeled carriage in my box of likely prospects and unearthed the beginnings of a Smokey Joe conversion I'd started many years ago. Combined with memories of this view the last time I drove to Llanidloes, the notion of putting together a collection of models representing the British standard gauge light railway took hold. As an answer to the question, what next, it has a sense of logical progression, bringing the concept of not exactly like the real thing to ever more mainstream subjects. Here's the state of play so far.

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I've deliberately chosen to use models from the seventies and earlier partly to see what potential can be unlocked and partly to pose the question why did nobody think to use them that way forty years ago?
 
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