Modelling Medieval Towns, Seas & Apocalyptic Scenes

Morning All!

Hope you're all well. It's still wet and occasionally windy down here in the Southwest, but it's great weather for getting a bit of model making done.

It's been all go here at SMS working on a million and one things behind the scenes… and as you can see, we have a fresh look to the newsletter! As most of you now read it online rather than in your email programs, we decided it was now time to make it easier to access the newsletter back issues and access the videos. So, the plan is to publish the newsletters here, in the How to Guides & Tutorials section of the Scale Model Scenery website. Then you can access them all, as and when you please!

We'll still be publishing the same great content every Saturday morning, just in this fresh look format. And we'll still be doing our usual thing, creating Realistically Better building kits and accessories for you to enjoy building, and adding to your layouts and dioramas.

And it's with a heavy heart that we say goodbye to one of our dedicated team this coming week. Iain, who's manned our phones, handled the customer service side of things, and been a font of all knowledge with his experience in the hobby, knowledge of the real railways and of course our products for almost 6 years, is moving on to pastures new at the end of November. He's worked his socks off over the past 6 years, as a key member of team SMS and has been enjoying a couple of weeks holiday (supervising the installation of his new kitchen). We wish him all the best for the future and will certainly miss him! Best of luck Iain… I'm sure you'll do well!

Christmas Open Evening

If you're in the area on the evening of the 14th of December, we're having a bit of a Christmas Open Evening again at our unit down here in Truro. Join us for a few mince pies & a bit of merriment… meet fellow modellers, see more of our kits in the flesh and try your hand in our lucky dip bucket! And if we can work out how the devil to do it… we might do some kind of live stream thing for those that can't make it in person… Need to get our heads together on that one. Anyway… if you can, we'd love you to join us between 5pm and 8pm on the 14th of December down here at Unit 26, Tresillian Business Park if you can!

Product Development - Latest News

This week… Sam's been working his socks off revamping a couple of textures as well as creating a couple of new variants of our painted corrugated iron texture. These are brilliant for ramshackle sheds & outbuildings!

I've been continuing work on the thing I started last week… It's progressing slowly and my wrap templates are now about sorted. Next week I'll be pushing on with rendering and weathering them, ready to do a test build. Really looking forward to getting stuck into it as I'm trying a couple of new things with the windows on this one.

Building A Medieval Town In 1:72 Scale

Sam has chosen this week's videos, so we're really mixing things up for our revamped version of the newsletter. Whilst most of you reading this will be building model railway layouts, it's good to look to other niches of model making for inspiration and to learn new techniques. Our first video this week, by Samy, shows how to build an incredibly detailed and realistic medieval townscape in 1:72 scale. The cobbled yard is amazing… With each cobble laid individually. It must have taken hours just to lay those let alone create all the buildings and paint it all. That's real dedication for you!

Pirate Ships Battle On The High Seas

Next up, Boylei Hobby Time shows how to make a stunning pirate ships diorama in 1:130 scale. The bit that fascinates me here is the sea itself. The effect of the rough sea just looks amazing and the added lighting shining through fibres represents the firing cannons. This technique could be used to great effect on a model railway to enhance a flickering bonfire for example.

Apocalypse Survivors Search A Contaminated World For Supplies

Now it's over to Scale Model Geek for a look at how they built this superb apocalyptic scene using a MiniArt 1/35th scale tram, equipped with tracks so it can tackle any terrain in a post apocolyptic world. Lots of useful techniques demonstrated again here including air brushing, dry brushing, plaster casting, figure painting and more.

Plane Crash Survivor Builds EPIC Beach Shelter Diorama

And finally, we have this incredible beach scene from Creative Cuts featuring a crashed plane & survivors' shelter. Whilst it's not something you're likely to model on a railway layout, again there are many techniques we can use on them. The main landscape is carved from insulation foam, which is commonly used in railway modelling to create embankments, hills, and cuttings. The sea in this scene is amazing, being made from poured resin which has then been carefully chipped away using a Dremel (other multi-tool thingies are available). Noch Foam has then been used to detail the breaking waves as they reach the shore. Again, you could use Mod Podge to achieve a similar effect here.

The palm trees are a particular favourite of mine too. Starting off as amazingly simple, “plasticky” trees, it's amazing what a little airbrushing can do to enhance things.

This Week's New Releases

• TX291-OO Rusty Green Corrugated Iron - OO/4mm/1:76
  A particularly useful pack of 5 sheets of green painted corrugated iron sheets. Ideal for sheds, farm buildings & tabernacles.
  Downloadable PDF versions in First Class & Pay As You Go
   
• TX292-OO Rusty Red Oxide Corrugate Iron - OO/4mm/1:76
  As above really but in red oxide finish instead. Again, it's ideal for sheds, roofs, farm buildings and a myriad of other things.
  Downloadable PDF versions in First Class & Pay As You Go
   
• AX198-OO GWR Long Barrow (Pack of 2) - OO/4mm/1:76
  Delightfully detailed GWR Long Barrows for adding an extra finishing touch to your GWR station platform or goods shed. 
   
• RSB002-OO Realistically Better Factory Seconds Bundle
  And while we don't do Black Friday or Black Friday Weekends, we do occasionally do Orange Fridays… And Klaire's been busy putting these rather great value seconds bundles together. Not sure how many there will be left when this goes live but it's worth trying your luck at least :)

First Class Layout Plaques

Also… if you're a First Class member of the Railway Modellers Club… you can bag yourself one of these little beauties to put on your layout. We'll be issuing one of these each year to each member… So if you've not had yours yet, you can find the link in the First Class Lounge.

And while you're at it, we have finally published the next issue of the First Class newsletter. The link for that is in the lounge too.

Next week then, I'll be pushing on with my test build as well as hopefully getting some shelves up in our showroom for our baseboards to sit on as well as finally fixing the darn signs on the displays down there too!

Have an amazing weekend folks… and of course…

Keep on shunting…

Justin, Tina, Elizabeth, Lola & The Team

P.S. This weekend's header image comes from Greg over on the Railway Modellers Community. The chap on the right looks really deep in thought!