Morning gang!
How's things? Hope you've had an amazing week… Yesterday was a little challenging with the worldwide IT outage as it took our website offline for pretty much the entire day, from 7am until about 4:30pm. Incredibly frustrating, but hey-ho, what can you do. We're back online now and normal service is resumed. The one good thing we realised though is that because we use a separate system from our website to handle fulfilment, all parcels still went out on time.
Anyway… It looks like summer is back for a few days, so we've popped up to the midlands for a few days to visit parents. We've been out in the sunshine helping Tina's mum & dad build a new retaining wall around their patio. And spending a bit of time with round at my parents to give my dad a bit of a break as he's now a full time carer for my mum.
And while we've been up in the midlands, Elizabeth has taken the opportunity to catch up with friends from school which has been nice. She also drove us all the way up to Leicester from Mevagissey too! So she's getting some motorway miles under her belt.
I think she's glad to have her car back. It's been in the garage for over a month while the mechanics tried to track down a strange electrical fault. She got it back about a week ago, only to find it wasn't fixed. So Tina did some googling and found that the issue was actually being caused by a burnt out connector in the rear light cluster. So actioned a simple fix with a bit of 13 amp cable soldered in as a bypass to the connector as suggested on the page Tina found and so far… touch wood… it's all ok!
Work wise the week has absolutely flown by, with a myriad of things going on behind the scenes. If some of what we've been working on comes to fruition it'll be pretty darn amazing! We seem to be spending an awful lot of our time staring at spreadsheets at the moment but it's worth persevering with while things are little quieter over the summer. Then we'll be nicely prepared for the winter all being well. We've got more to dig into over the weekend before we drive back down to the South West too.
And did you know, we're the first & last Peco stockist in Cornwall? I don't mean the first ever to stock Peco… But we're the first Peco stockist as you drive down into Cornwall and last as you're leaving the county! So we're now the only shop serving the whole of central and east Cornwall which is pretty blummin fantastic! Other than us, there's only Kernow Model Rail Centre down in Camborne and another shop in Penzance. So if you're coming to Cornwall on holiday and staying anywhere between Plymouth and Truro… pop in and see us… Grab a few buildings and bit of Peco stuff as a souvenir!
While we've been up north, Scott, Carl, Sam & Stu have been keeping things ticking over nicely at HQ, while Jess has been helping with a complete reorganisation of the website… The improvements she's making should make a huge difference to your shopping experience over the next few weeks.
New Product Development
Due to meetings and various other things going on this week, and also driving up to the midlands, I've had little to no time at my desk to create finish off anything new which is a shame. But sometimes there's just not enough hours in the weeks.
In the meantime, it's over to young Sam for this weekend's videos.
Good morning! It's feeling more like summer after that awful week of rain. All of us as SMS hope that you've had a good week and make the most of the weekend. There hasn't been a whole lot on the product development side of things, mainly behind-the-scenes stuff, but there should be a couple of bits here and there being released soon.
Time for some videos!
How To Photograph Your Layout / Diorama
The first video comes from Budget Model Railways, who I don't believe I've featured before but have come across many times - as I'm sure many of you have as well. He has a great series called Tutorial Tuesday which is full of useful tips. One of the biggest shames for me when it comes to modelling is when I see a fantastic layout but the photos don't do it justice. In this video, he goes through the process which is easy to do but results in brilliant photos. To start, he prepares the scene by adding figures of people and model cars. After the preparation, he goes into camera/phone settings. Once the settings have been sorted, he goes over things like camera position, composition and more. Finally, he ends the video with editing and the results.
If any of you have a layout you are passionate about, please watch this video so you aren't taking low-quality photos.
Interesting Facts About British Railways
Second, we have a video from Rails and Tales. This video is short and sweet. I'm pretty certain that the voiceover is AI but it is getting harder and harder to tell nowadays. Apologies to Rails and Tales if it isn't AI. However, there are some interesting facts and like I said, it's a short video so go give it a quick watch and see how many facts you know!
Diorama of Cuba
Next, we have a video from the infamous PILENTUM channel. In this, we see a fantastic model railroad diorama of Cuba by Samuel de Zutter and Valentijn van der Haegen from the Netherlands. The layout is in O Scale, a gauge that I don't feature all that often but is a great way to get lots of detail. This layout is inspired by the tobacco industry and the various stages of it, from the tobacco plantation to processing and sales. Cuba fascinates me as it has such a rich culture including Santeria. One of my favourite comedians Joey Diaz is from there and always tells hilarious and interesting stories about their culture. There is so much going on in this layout but my favourite part has to be the woman falling off the bike.
In the description, it states "Samuel and Valentijn are true experts in scratch building, i.e. they do not use prefabricated parts or kits." which is incredible! When I saw "Scratch Building" in the title, I assumed it meant just the buildings but after reading the description, I was blown away.
Enfield Whitewebbs Model Railway Exhibition 2024
Finally, we have a bit of Exhibition Coverage for you! This video was kindly sent to my email from Sam Hill (a very talented modeller). The video itself is by Matt from the channel Dusty Shelf Collectables. For more details about this exhibition, you can click here.
For up-and-coming exhibitions, you can click here.
That concludes the videos for this week. I hope you enjoyed them. Let me know what you think about them in the comments or an email (sam@scalemodelscenery.co.uk). Have a great rest of your weekend.
New Stuff
Just the one new addition to the range of laser cut accessories this week…
- LX410-120 Pre-Weathered Laser Cut Roof Slates (A5 Sheet) - TT:120
These have been getting such great reviews in all other scales (N, OO & O) we thought we'd better get them done for TT:120. They're ideal for scratch-building and also for upgrading other kits too. Some of you have had fantastic feedback from folks using these on Metcalfe and Super Quick kits.
Need them in other scales? No problem… Shop all weathered roof slates. Or if you prefer terracotta tiles, you can find those here.
Back In Stock This Week…
We've restocked a loads more stuff this week and we've also just received a large delivery of N gauge track from Peco which is being loaded onto the website as I write this.
- Gaugemaster Backscenes In OO, N & TT:120
I know I mentioned these last week, but we sold out really quickly last weekend, so restocked during the week and I can now confirm we have the full range of Gaugemaster Backscenes in stock! Backscenes add a real sense of depth to a layout and when coupled with an array of low relief buildings can give the impression that a layout is much bigger than it is.
There range covers pretty much any location around the UK, from urban to rural, industrial to rolling hills & mountains. They're very high resolution too, giving you a in incredibly realistic backdrop for your layout.
The larger backscenes are ideal for OO/HO and larger scales, measuring a generous 2.7m long by around 300mm tall. The smaller ones are ideal for N & TT:120 measuring approx 1.3m long x 150mm tall. Click here to shop backscenes.
- Humbrol Weathering Pens
Looking for a quick and easy way to weather card & paper buildings, random bits of scenery and more? Then Humbrol's weathering pens could be just the job! And they're back in stock! Order a pack here.
Right, that's about it for this edition of the weekly news. We're off our with the dog for an hour, then it's time to help Tina's dad get the retaining wall finished. Then we're heading back home tomorrow in time for this years work experience student to join us at HQ on Monday!
Have an amazing weekend folks… And of course…
Keep on shunting…
Justin, Tina, Elizabeth, Lola & The Team
P.S. This weeks newsletter header comes from Rob over on the Railway Modellers community, with this cracking shot of 66135 heading to Carlisle Yard.
P.P.S. Missed a newsletter? You can read all of our recent newsletters online here.