Detail on a deadline

Despite being built within a tight three-week time limit, Dan Hughes’ ‘Katie Lane TMD’ doesn’t scrimp on the detail.

Words: Chris Gadsby Photography: Chris Nevard Artwork: Andrew Mackintosh

What makes this layout great?

“ ‘Katie Lane’ feels like a snapshot of a much larger depot in a bustling industrial environment. With the glimpse of terraced houses and the rear of a Tesco store, you get the impression that a busy South Wales town is just the other side of the backscene. ”

We often think of model railways as a relaxing hobby that we can do to while away the hours, painting miniature people and making sure everything is exactly how we want it to be before moving on. But what if you haven’t got hours to spend on the finer details? What if you are told you have just three weeks to build an exhibition layout before the Swansea model railway show? That was the challenge Dan Hughes found himself met with in 2023 when one of the members of the Swansea Railway Modellers Group asked him if he fancied building something for the upcoming event. Dan said yes, and the result is ‘Katie Lane TMD’.

Despite being on such a tight deadline, Dan was insistent with himself that this wouldn’t be a slapdash job, even if that would mean pulling some all-nighters.

3 things we like

1 Workers digging away behind safety barriers.

2 A host of spare locomotive parts in open storage.

3 The finely painted tools and equipment.

“I went through about eight different track plans before I decided I was happy with where each of the four points were situated and with the curvature of the tracks that those locations gave me. It would have been easy to panic with the time constraint and include siding after siding in the 10in wide space, but as somebody who has always built depots, I knew better than to haphazardly include track where it wasn’t needed. Everything at the depot has to be there for a reason. It’s a bit of a niche, but I have a thing about fuel points. Most of my research goes into them as I love the dinginess and grime surrounding them, so including one is a must on all of my layouts. With a fuel point comes the need to drop fuel off on site, so another siding is needed for incoming tankers. After both of those and the inclusion of a Bachmann Scenecraft shed, there was only room for one more short siding to still give me space for the smaller details. I’ve always been interested in railways and every one of my layouts has been based on the South Wales coast around the same 1980s to 1990s period, so by this point I’m well versed in what these depots need to include and what I needed to include to represent them fairly.”

DEVIL IN THE DETAIL

You might think that building a layout that only has a 3ft 6in by 10in scenic section would keep the cost down. However, with such a small area comes the ability to really hone in on all of those small details that would get lost on a large scale creation. Dan has modified the shed to fit the space, before filling it with hundreds of pounds worth of finer details.

“I’ve got a great relationship with the people at West Hill Wagon Works, but they keep bringing out products that make me part with my money! I’ve always enjoyed making micro layouts so that I can concentrate so much on smaller areas to get the feel just right, and having such a wide range of available products from West Hill and others makes it so much easier than it was a decade or so ago. I wanted to get plenty of atmosphere into the space while at all times remembering that less is often more. It would be so easy to overdo an area and so I spent a while moving parts around, adding stuff and taking it away, until I got the look I wanted. I used to work for War World Scenics so have used products from there to create the two small embankments on the left-hand side and any greenery between the tracks, and the curtain which disguises the entrance to the fiddleyard has been made from strips of fabric bought from The Range.”

After spending so much of his three-week time limit getting everything in the right place, Dan couldn’t just let a shiny new locomotive come onto the scene. Fortunately, weathering is where he gets the most enjoyment out of the hobby.

“I used to use a mix of airbrushing and powders on all of my models but after many years of practice, I’ve found that I much prefer using the airbrush. Even on tiny details you can get a good effect if you tune the airbrush with a finer nozzle and adjust the pressure. I do sometimes use powders for textured work but have found I end up just airbrushing over the top of them anyway. To make the model look as good as possible I always refer to prototype pictures and replicate them as closely as possible. That way you know that where you are putting dirt is a realistic location for where it would be in real life.”

THE FAVOURITE

As with any layout, there will always be something deemed ‘the favourite’. For Dan, that’s a very special ModelU figure.

“If you look closely there’s a figure taking photographs of the fuel point from the corner of the car park. That’s a scan of my wife Katie, from which the layout gets its name, and that figure has been on every ‘Katie Lane TMD’ I’ve built. There have been a few before this one, but this is the only one I’ve finished!”

Not everybody will have the desire to build a model railway from start to finish in a matter of weeks, or pull all-nighters to get it done. If you do want a model railway without spending years on it though, then maybe putting everything you have into one over a short period of time is the way to go? Dan has since sold ‘Katie Lane TMD’ to make space for another layout, perhaps he will give himself more time to get this one finished!

FACTFILE: ‘KATIE LANE’

ABOUT THE MODELLER: DAN HUGHES

“I’ve recently got into offroading so could do with Oxford Diecast releasing some more 4x4 vehicles! I used to run a small weathering business but have had to put that to one side as a new job has meant I can’t put the time into it I once could.”