Visions of Sodor ~ The Watermill

Here is the Watermill on Thomas' Branchline. This was always a well-known scene on Sodor, and so I wanted to recreate the diorama for my model railway to take photographs and film.

Here my green afghan quilt is used for grass. The hills are made with spare wood planks, pieces and boards placed underneath, with cardboard boxes to make the shapes. As nothing is permanent, this is a great method for me as I can change the scene to how I want it to look. I could rearrange the Woodland Scenics trees or the rocks until I am happy with the final finished scene. Bushes are spare Woodland Scenics ground foam, and the water is a sheet of plexiglass.

I built the watermill and the bridge from scratch using textured card stock paper, cutting the pieces with scissors, assembled with glue and Scotch tape, and weathered them using acrylic paint.

In this picture I recreated the scene for Percy's Ghostly Trick episode, using a large office light with a blue fluorescent bulb for the moonlight, and a small LED light taped inside the watermill to light the interior. I made the window panes from scratch, with clear plastic for the window glass so I could make this beautiful effect for this scene.

I also made these figures and the boat from scratch! The boat is also paper card, cut and glued into the hull shell, with strips cut for the seats, rudder, and separate oars. You can see how I made the figures here.

This was one of my favorite scenes on the Thomas show, and it wasn't to difficult to model. It took me about a half and hour to set everything up, and then I filmed the scenes I wanted to capture from the episodes. It is really fun to learn how the modelling team on the Thomas show made their sets, and it is great practice as a model railroader, too.

My Workbench

To keep interest going for my blog, I am going to post pictures and sketches of my old model railroad and some plans for future projects. I know that fans comment on how much they like the tests and sets I have made on my YouTube channel, so I hope you come and see my ideas and tips on a daily/weekly basis, and enjoy the pages you see and read!

Here is a picture I took of my work space in my room, for creating art for college and my scale modeling! You can see Sir Handel, a Knapford goods shed, some freshly painted freight cars, and other projects I have done for the past few years.

Pictured are also the common tools I use:

• a cutting mat
• pencils
• craft knife and Atlas track knife
• scissors
• rulers and templates
• Scotch tape, white glue and Crazy glue
• acrylic paint
• technical pencil and pencil lead
• gel pens
• pencil sharpener

 You can see the posts I have in order of my projects in the Workbench pages I have at the top of the blog panel, check them out to see the engines buildings and other cool stuff made!

More posts coming soon.

Modelling the Skarloey Railway Engines

Skarloey, Rheneas and the rest of the Narrow Gauge roster have always been my favorite group of engines from the Thomas show. 

As a child I always wanted to have a train set with these characters, but as Bachmann Trains have so far stuck with the standard gauge trains, I wanted to try to see if I could make them myself.

They run on a Lego engine chassis. The body is all made of card stock, interchangeable with the motors, so they can run (not very smoothly or with moving coupling rods or smoke, but that will have to do!). The faces are made from baked Sculpy clay, painted with acrylic, the eyebrows drawn with ink pencil, and the eyes are painted stickers punched with a hole-puncher.

It took a lot of practice and remodeling to get the look down, but studying from original photographs of the real engines have helped me a great deal. Duke is my favorite narrow gauge engine, and in this picture, he is made as he was from the railway series. As is the face, the people are modeled in Sculpy clay. Buildings are card-stock and wood.

Let me know what you think! I really am surprised no one had tried to make super-realistic replicas of these engines. with so much detail. I hope you enjoy these photographs, and share them too.

Browse the pages on the menu and posts to see 16mm scale projects of modeling these characters!