Wemyss Private Railway - Scott's Road - Allan Goodwillie

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Allan Goodwillie
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Re: Wemyss Private Railway - Scott's Road - Allan Goodwillie

Postby Allan Goodwillie » Thu Nov 14, 2019 10:11 am

Hello John, :)

I am sorry about missing out the name of the layout :cry: here is a photo of the frontage showing a very nice finish overall. I am also sorry we did not get much time to have a longer chat, I don't like to be too far away from the layout when it is on show, given its age - coming up to 50 years. It still works remarkably well despite all the old style point motors and electrics, and I am hoping to get it into one or two shows, before any retiral - it still works pretty well and looks OK in today's company. When Dubbieside is finally retired it is going to fit into a much larger circuit again.

Here is Corrieshalloch. :D Well presented and lit, without being over the top - I like the appropriate lettering style used.

DSC05922.JPG


Again beautiful - don't know how I managed to miss out the name as I thought I had added it at the same time as I did with Holgen Bridge, thanks for pointing it out.

Allan
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Le Corbusier
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Re: Wemyss Private Railway - Scott's Road - Allan Goodwillie

Postby Le Corbusier » Thu Nov 14, 2019 10:51 am

Me ... I just want to be in that VW Camper heading up into the hills for a spot of exploration and adventure :thumb
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Julian Roberts
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Re: Wemyss Private Railway - Scott's Road - Allan Goodwillie

Postby Julian Roberts » Thu Nov 14, 2019 6:25 pm

Lots of inspiration from your layouts and others Allan; lovely pictures. Looks like Dubbieside's retirement may be as indefinite as mine from the orchestra! The oldies still have something to offer :D :!:

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Re: Wemyss Private Railway - Scott's Road - Allan Goodwillie

Postby Mark Tatlow » Fri Nov 15, 2019 9:31 am

Allan Goodwillie wrote:Hello John, :)

Here is Corrieshalloch. :D Well presented and lit, without being over the top - I like the appropriate lettering style used.

Allan


This is a link to Anthony's blog page; worth a scroll through to get to the pre-grouping stock.

https://ayeates2mm.blogspot.com/
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Allan Goodwillie
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Re: Wemyss Private Railway - Scott's Road - Allan Goodwillie

Postby Allan Goodwillie » Fri Nov 15, 2019 2:29 pm

Thanks Mark, :) :thumb

Some lovely modelling and a very nice Blog - I will probably go back to that a good few times - don't want to give up on learning, clearing the decks after Newcastle today, will do some repairs to the layout there is always something gets damaged. A tank wagon dropped off the layout and is somewhat distressed, but fixable and there are a few improvements I want to make before Dubbieside goes out again - some extra braces and repair to one of the joints where the dowels have come loose.

Bob Hetherington phoned last night wondering if I had actually been at Newcastle as a friend of his went but was unable to spot the layout as we had no Dubbieside identification fixed to the layout. Of course we had not taken the station boards! I have decided to put the name on more permanently by painting the name on the distillery wall in large print - something I have intended doing for many years, but never managed to get around to it. Most Scottish distilleries especially when situated on the coast had this feature.

As to retiral of the layout Julian, I would like to see it through to its 50th year of being exhibited in some form and hope to get it into one or two shows in 2022-23 - so if there are any exhibition managers who are interested in such a historic layout - please get in contact. - I intend building the layout into a larger circuit again just for home use - providing I survive myself of course. The new layout I hope will allow for continued exhibiting due to a much lighter build.

Allan :D

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Re: Wemyss Private Railway - Scott's Road - Allan Goodwillie

Postby Allan Goodwillie » Mon Dec 09, 2019 8:27 am

Since Newcastle I have been very busy,

I spent 4 days working on Philip Hall's photographs of Burntisland before they go on to the Society's site covering this year's Scalefourum. Philip's a really good photographer and has done so much over the years at our main shows and put in many hours during that time. I have always loved the photos he took of Burntisland the last time it appeared at Scalefourum and which are still on the site. I knew he would have his work cut out cleaning up any photos taken despite the additional curtaining that went into the presentation this year, which has helped to give it a more professional finish.

IN the photographs any operators, curtains etc. had to be removed and replaced with skies and in this case all the rigging re-instated - all of which takes time. It is always good to see someone with a thoughtful eye take an unrestrained look at the layout and Philip did not let us down, my own favourite shows one of the sailing ships and a tug built by Ray Nolton. It tends to be the passenger steamer and the ferry boat which get most recognition at shows. You might say why spend 4 days on photographs once they are taken, but it is worthwhile when the final photograph looks like this. :thumb

L11105050.jpg


In this one scene there have been many modellers hands involved. Apart from Ray's sailing ship and tug, working from the back there is Bruce Murray's new back scene. Don Rowland's hotel, Alan Ferguson and Alasdair Taylor's station and train shed, Lindsay Galloway's new pier, dock walls by Richard Chown, old pier, passenger ferry and water by myself and all the wooden structural work underlying all this by Richard Darby. A real team effort which applies throughout the layout and not just in this one photograph.

Again thanks should go to Philip for his efforts which are due to appear on the site covering this year's show.

Allan :)
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Re: Wemyss Private Railway - Scott's Road - Allan Goodwillie

Postby Philip Hall » Mon Dec 09, 2019 11:04 am

Allan, thank you for your comments about the Burntisland photos, you are very kind. And many thanks to you for cleaning up all the backgrounds; I can do a bit of this in Photoshop but I don’t have your abilities, so it was good of you to agree to help out. Had I known it would take you so much time I possibly wouldn’t have asked! Taking pictures at shows is also quite awkward because the photographer is in the way of the paying customers - the reason I only do Scaleforum. Rest assured there are plenty of pictures of other layouts which will appear in due course.

Models of ships made by railway modellers are often difficult things. We do things differently to marine modellers generally and so often the results aren’t very convincing, but not so with Burntisland. A few other layouts where the ships and dockside convince spring to mind, but they are often the exception rather than the rule. Personally I love the sailing ship!

Philip

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Allan Goodwillie
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Re: Wemyss Private Railway - Scott's Road - Allan Goodwillie

Postby Allan Goodwillie » Mon Dec 09, 2019 3:41 pm

Hi Philip, :)

Thanks very much, I hope you don't mind me mentioning it here, but you have done so much good work over the years and I know as a photographer myself and having taught photography in schools in the past, it is so easy for the public to think that good photography is easy now and that everyone can do it well. It is true that cameras on automatic can take a descent photograph under a wide range of conditions, but the best photographs I think tell a story which is not just how well a model is made. In the sort of scene which Burntisland portrays there is so much to select from, it can be difficult to really capture what a scene is all about. In your photograph the two vessels on either side frame the view in an interesting way which is dependent on the different sizes and characters of the two vessels.

There is a nice contrast between the shambolic appearance of the old pier compared to the new, with a nicely framed view of the shelter and figures waiting for the steamer to back in. The hotel and station are both nicely picked out, but seen as the background. The level the photograph is taken at shows off the water and boats well and gives the impression of being at the height of another vessel just off the harbour. It also allows for the sky to be a feature, which I made as simple as I could taking from the colours in the back scene. This brought out the details of ship sails and ropes which you had been able to get in focus. Again the depth of field was just spot on. The low view point also meant that this photo did not have too many reflections of our new diode lights. :thumb

It was a delight to work on the photographs Philip and I do not mind spending time on something of such quality which requires care and precision, to make the most of them and not loose any of the quality. You will have noticed that I have not made any attempt to re-frame any of them I am sure. The detail on one of the steamer photographs was so good it was possible to blow up the figures which I had hand made, (60 of them used on the boat and elsewhere within the scheme), to be able to see expressions etc. I have been able to identify one or two improvements I might make.

It is nice to see that Tim has used a photograph I sent in of the Wemyss layout as it has been developed so far. I deliberately shot it with a limited depth of field as we were discussing at Scalefourum.The second little engine pottering about came out just the right degree of soft which I was looking for. The sky was created just using a large sheet of paper and using the dull-ish natural light coming in from the window. The only photo shopping that I have used was to add a little suggestion of steam drifting up the side of the engine and a little white-ish smoke - hardly anything really, but it caught the late autumn / early winter feel that I am going for and therefore appropriate for a winter cover.

Allan :)

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Re: Wemyss Private Railway - Scott's Road - Allan Goodwillie

Postby Philip Hall » Mon Dec 09, 2019 5:28 pm

Allan, thanks again.

Lest this should sound like two old pals congratulating each other perhaps I can expand a little by revealing that the camera I use at Scaleforum (Leica V-lux 4) is not my favourite camera for this sort of work, often preferring my old Canon S3IS, which has a smaller sensor and just seems to give a better close-up picture, notwithstanding that the lens is just a basic Canon and the other one a Leica! One of Vincent De Bode’s colleagues works for Leica and explained why this should be so to me a couple of years back, something to do with the software I believe. These things are a bit beyond me, always have been. I just keep the Canon now for home ‘studio’ pictures and occasional layout jobs. The Leica delivers wonderfully sharp pictures of general subjects, almost as good as a decent SLR, but at a fraction of the weight. Just not quite so good as the Canon for the model close-up stuff. I have had a couple of MRJ covers out of it, though, and the heading picture to Graham Thompson’s carriage article this month was also from the Leica, albeit much enlarged.

To return to your cover picture, I always like something atmospheric, maybe slightly less than perfectly sharp, in cases like this. So much of the mainstream press seems to think that pictures must be vibrant and razor sharp which to me just serves to emphasise the fact that the subject is a model. Still less do I like the software that combines lots of shots into one that is stunningly sharp from front to back.

Philip

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Re: Wemyss Private Railway - Scott's Road - Allan Goodwillie

Postby jon price » Mon Dec 09, 2019 11:01 pm

My normal day to day imaging equipment has lenses that are well over 60 years old, and there appears to be some kind of dust inside. In addition I have used supplementry external lenses since I was about six years old, consequently "vibrant razor sharp" pictures in the magazines with everything from near to far in pin sharp focus don't look real at all, they just make me feel as if I have ingested some kind of psychotropic ethogen.
Connah's Quay Workshop threads: viewforum.php?f=125

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Allan Goodwillie
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Re: Wemyss Private Railway - Scott's Road - Allan Goodwillie

Postby Allan Goodwillie » Tue Dec 10, 2019 12:25 pm

Hi Jon, and Philip, :)

My own camera that I use all the time now is just a Sony Cyber-shot camera which does everything I want to be able to do with it. It is very compact and easily slipped into a pocket. When I went to China for the first time I wanted a camera that would be easy to carry, but give me better results than my phone camera. I met up with a couple of photographers there, one who works for the Australian press and another who works on wildlife photographic expeditions in China and works freelance and it turned out that they also had the same cameras and thought highly of them. My son Dave now has one and gets good results photographing the real railways and is developing a real eye.

The reason that the press seem to go for a really bright sharp photograph particularly for covers is that they have to stand out on the news stand. I was happy that Tim has been kind enough to publish one or two of my photographs and use them as front covers recently, all of which have been more towards the "atmospheric" side, but Tim does not have to worry about the front cover competing on a news stand and can go for something a bit more subtle.

I bought my MRJ this morning and it has well lit photographs throughout, but very little information as to who took the photographs, nice interesting detailed photo on the cover, but as in many other editions no mention of who took the photograph. I think it is a pity as I regard the quality of the photographs to be of equal import as the text in the presentation of the layouts. Even if the photographs were taken by the author I would still like to know. The MRJ stands out on the shelf, partly because of the areas of white surrounding the picture on the cover, most others go for a cover photo covering the full area with text on top - which can be a bit unkind on the photo. Both S4 News and MRJ allow space for the photo to breathe and I think they should be commended for doing so.

I have said this to Philip, but not to you Jon, I remember a very interesting lecture and discussion given by Peter Collins, one of our lecturers at Dundee college of Art many years ago, about how we read pictures and the different vision of the Pre-Raphaelites and the Impressionist painters, super clarity verses overall atmosphere and feel. All of which was very interesting. We as railway enthusiasts have also developed a way of seeing over the years that is partly dependent on how the railway scene has been recorded over the years via the camera lens. There is a similar view and discussion between the hunting for the perfect 3/4 view in full clarity of say an Eric Tracy photograph or the very atmospheric photographs of Collin Gifford. I love both as it happens (the same is also true of the Pre-Raphaelites and The Impressionists). Just for the fun of it here is the photo from the front cover of the S4 News done as if it was a black and white taken on the real railway many years ago without any real burning in done in the studio.

DSC0549121 (2).jpg


An interesting exercise and I can see for myself immediately a number of things which I will have to improve upon! I have come to the conclusion over the years that those who build layouts should also take photographs of what they make for when you take a descent photo you can immediately see what might be wrong with the model and this can be used as a tool to encourage better modelling :thumb - I would suggest this is an activity for lone modellers as an approach and not part of any group activity! :o

Sorry Philip, :cry: I did not mean to give too chummy an impression to anyone reading this, as you know we have only met a few times over the years, but I have always enjoyed our chats and have the same approach to everyone I meet in the hobby. It is something we do for the pleasure of doing it and it is always a pleasure meeting someone who has experience and some expertise in all sorts of areas which you dabble in yourself, but it is all interesting and should not be taken to extremes - there are far more important things in life. :|

Happy modelling both!
Allan :)
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Re: Wemyss Private Railway - Scott's Road - Allan Goodwillie

Postby Phil O » Tue Dec 10, 2019 6:39 pm

Hi Allan,

Which particular version of the Sony Cyber Shot have you got, as I have just googled it and find there are several versions with a wide variation in prices.

Cheers Phil.

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Re: Wemyss Private Railway - Scott's Road - Allan Goodwillie

Postby Allan Goodwillie » Thu Dec 12, 2019 11:24 am

HI Phil, :)

The particular version I have is the

Sony Cyber-shot DSC-HX60 Camera, HD 1080p, 20.4MP, 30x Optical Zoom, Wi-Fi, NFC, 3" Screen, Black

I've had a look this morning and John Lewis is advertising them at £185 on their site - there are lots of good reviews as well, I bought mine at Curries about 4 years ago and we also bought one for Dave my son to use. Dave loves the extremes so the optical zoom he uses a lot when out and about, but he also loves close-up work. I tend to use it for mid range and close up, but never use flash for any of my photographs, nor do I use any connection to my phone or wireless to my computer, so cannot comment on these particular features. I have had the use of a wide range of SLR cameras over the years including Cannon etc. but find this much lighter to handle and gives the same quality at a reduced price.

Most of the Sony cameras I have had in the past had Zeiss lenses, however this has a Sony lens, but I am totally happy with it from this point of view. :)

Hope that's of some use Phil
Allan :)

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Re: Wemyss Private Railway - Scott's Road - Allan Goodwillie

Postby Phil O » Mon Dec 16, 2019 8:48 pm

Hi Allan,

Many thanks for the info, I will check it out later, there's no point in ordering one now as I am away with the family over the Christmas period.

Cheers Phil

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Re: Wemyss Private Railway - Scott's Road - Allan Goodwillie

Postby Allan Goodwillie » Wed Dec 18, 2019 11:23 am

Hi Phil, :)

Let me know whatever you decide you are going to do. Enjoy the Christmas period and all the best progress in the New Year. :)

I am hoping to make some progress myself, but unlikely to do much in the way of posting over the holiday period, so Happy Christmas to anyone following my workbench thread and all the best in the New Year whatever that may bring in the way of modelling opportunities. I am not sure Phil what you do each New Year, I have a regular New Year promise I make to myself each year and have done this for a number of years now and that is to complete a few items that I have been working on. This is always a good start to the New Year as there is a great feeling of progress completing things, rather than start yet another new project, which is always nice, but often a distraction towards the completion of the layout.

Enjoy the time with your family Phil, there are far more important things in life than model railways. :)

Allan :)

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Re: Wemyss Private Railway - Scott's Road - Allan Goodwillie

Postby Phil O » Wed Dec 18, 2019 2:40 pm

Allan,

I'm passing through Reading on Sunday and they have a John Lewis, so I'm hoping to pop in and see if they have one, otherwise it's back to plan A and order one after the festivities.

A happy and peaceful Christmas to you and yours.

Phil.

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Re: Wemyss Private Railway - Scott's Road - Allan Goodwillie

Postby Phil O » Sun Dec 29, 2019 3:36 pm

Allan

I picked a camera from Currys/PC World in Worcseter yesterday, I now have to learn how to fly it, it has a lot of similarities to my Fugi DSLR, so hopefully the learning curve will not be too steep.

Phil

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Re: Wemyss Private Railway - Scott's Road - Allan Goodwillie

Postby Allan Goodwillie » Tue Dec 31, 2019 10:21 pm

HI Phil, :)

I am sure it will give you many happy hours, I have had mine for some time and yet have quite a few features to explore. Have fun and I look forward to seeing some of the results. :)

DSC054641.jpg


Both engines are a bit clean yet and will eventually be weathered, which lets down the photograph a bit. Finding time to paint the other engines for the layout, so will put up some photos hopefully some time during January.

Happy New Year when it comes. :D

Allan
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Re: Wemyss Private Railway - Scott's Road - Allan Goodwillie

Postby Allan Goodwillie » Sun May 10, 2020 10:00 pm

HI everyone, :)

for those interested in seeing the engines , they are at an interesting stage in that they are all painted as ex-works and running. The Barclay locomotives are being finished off as part of a batch of nine locomotives for the Scott's Road layout and are a mixture of Scratch and kit built with two being rebuilds from more ancient times. There will be more to follow in time. You can start to find the engines here-

https://www.scalefour.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=39&p=75230#p75230

Allan :)

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Re: Wemyss Private Railway - Scott's Road - Allan Goodwillie

Postby Allan Goodwillie » Sun May 31, 2020 4:32 pm

The most recent of the engines is number 17, which I show here, but there are even better photographs of the engine here:

https://www.scalefour.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=39&t=6929&start=25

DSC06486.JPG


DSC06483.JPG


Once the engines are finished at this stage I will get back to the development of the layout and other projects that have been completed at my workbench.

Allan :)
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Re: Wemyss Private Railway - Scott's Road - Allan Goodwillie

Postby Allan Goodwillie » Mon Jan 03, 2022 8:47 am

Hello everyone, especially Les who asked me to post this here :D

I am sorry I have not been able to contribute much over the last two years and my Scotts Road layout has not progressed much in that time. Two reasons both of them Covid. My son Dave and I both caught it on the Sunday at the exhibition in Preston where we went as operators on Ray Nolton's lovely layout. Within 24 hours of returning we both went down with a particularly bad bought of 'flu. Dave recovered after about a week, but mine went on fro three weeks. At the time, fortunately, neither of us were hospitalised and at the time it was difficult to get a proper diagnoses. However certain aspects of what I had were never going away and it became clear I was suffering from long Covid. The most difficult aspects were the 4 day headaches as well as not being able to sleep at night and days becoming weeks sometimes, of complete exhaustion. We had isolated ourselves from the beginning and have stayed much that way since as I help out an elderly neighbour. This, I am sure, is probably familiar territory to many of you. If so I hope you are recovering well and like me getting back into modelling again. :)

Covid also struck again with the cancellation of exhibitions. :o Progress with Scotts Road is now going ahead again and it is hoped to have it at Newcastle in November this year 2022. It may not have all the bells and whistles at that stage, but I am determined to get it out on the circuit as soon as I can. I also had another modelling calamity when a storm damaged the garage roof and water came in and caused many of the Grayrigg layout's boards to warp. I have dismantled the layout, had a new roof and power door fitted to the garage and intend reconstructing Grayrigg over the next few months - which I may put up as a separate thread. :idea:

So enough about Covid! :cry:

Thankfully, I am beginning to feel more like contributing again to the Forum and was re-connecting the other day for the first time in the last 2 years. I had been following things, but not putting much up and under "inspiring modelling" was enjoying a discussion on what can be believed in terms of photographs and what might be real or otherwise. In the process I mentioned to my friend Les that I was making some new trees for Scotts Road and was asked to put something on this on the Forum as there is not a great deal on the Forum about the subject.

So, as promised Les, here are one or two photographs of a tree that is under construction at the moment. The model tree is 10 inches in height and uses tree roots and wire for its basic construction. There may be others that use the same techniques, but I started in the early days using car Bowden cable and wax for early construction of trees which is what I still have on Dubbieside. I went over to using rose bush roots during the 1980's and have continued to develop the techniques ever since. I will just post a couple of photographs here showing the starting structure and branch detail, I am sorry f the photographs are not quite up to my usual standard. The light has not been particularly good for taking photographs.

DSC07859.JPG


DSC07866.JPG


DSC07857.JPG


It feels good to be back, but until I am fully recovered I may not be quite as prolific as I have been in past years, just have to be hopeful and see what is possible.

Allan :)
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Re: Wemyss Private Railway - Scott's Road - Allan Goodwillie

Postby LesGros » Mon Jan 03, 2022 9:35 am

Happy New Year Alan,

:D It is good to know that you are recovering. Longish periods of fatigue are familiar to me from many years of feeling below par when recovering from (too frequent) ten day bouts with the Flu. Your account shows that Long Covid is an order of magnitude worse.

In the last two years, the reduced stimulus during lock downs has also taken its toll on many of us. Zoom meetings have helped, but brain fog has such a debilitating impact on the process of deciding what is best to do next; to get things done. So many strands stalled. . .
But, as you say, that's enough of the Covid stuff.

Thank you for sharing the images; I think we will all be looking at the product of weeding in a new way; when the Winter fades into Spring.

Cheerydoo,
LesG

The man who never made a mistake
never made anything useful

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Le Corbusier
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Re: Wemyss Private Railway - Scott's Road - Allan Goodwillie

Postby Le Corbusier » Mon Jan 03, 2022 10:06 am

Welcome back Allan ..... fingers crossed you are now coming out of the woods! ;) looking forward to seeing the trees develop.

Tim
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Paul Townsend
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Re: Wemyss Private Railway - Scott's Road - Allan Goodwillie

Postby Paul Townsend » Mon Jan 03, 2022 10:12 am

Do you have to have a dead rose bush or can you nick roots from a live one?

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Allan Goodwillie
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Re: Wemyss Private Railway - Scott's Road - Allan Goodwillie

Postby Allan Goodwillie » Mon Jan 03, 2022 11:56 am

Thanks Les and Tim :)

I appreciate your kind thoughts -I hope I have seen the last of brain fog - not much fun if you are making a cup of tea and can't figure out what a kettle is used for! It is now a couple of months since my last fog - would not want to be driving when it comes down.

However, in answer to Paul's question about using roots cut directly from growing bushes. It may surprise you to know but specific roots are linked to specific branches in most plants. We in recent years had the council reconstruct the road outside our house to allow bigger bin lorries to get around our circle. Unfortunately this meant that some of the tree roots were cut in the process. This had an effect on certain branches of our lovely cherry trees - but not the ones directly above the roots cut, it was the opposite side of the tree away from the road that suffered. Fortunately since then there has been regrowth as the root system has re-developed.

I have been told that this is typical of most plants. I don't just use rose roots, but have found that anything with a woody stem may well be good for the cause. I do not use stems from living plants, but have always used material from ones which have died off or being replaced due to age in the garden. Even a walk in the countryside will produce results, as trees and bushes can be blown over in the wind revealing useful root systems

I recently found a really nice piece of, I think, ground elder which had died along with the tree it was growing on. Easily enough to make several trees or serve as a basis of a copse.

DSC07834.JPG


DSC07837.JPG


DSC07838.JPG


Given these examples I am sure you can see the potential, it almost seems a bit crazy separating out the parts, so sometimes I will use them in their entirety. however they tend to be flatter than real trees so the first trick is to be able to put two or three parts together that seem to fit a particular type of tree structure and go by that. The example I am working on at the moment is a beech tree - one of my favourite types of tree and I have chosen stems that are fairly straight. There were three main pieces chosen and three, what I would call character pieces of a smaller size - a couple of pieces were broken and I wanted them to represent broken and dead branches on the tree. :cry: Different types of tree use branches in different specialised ways - something I may come back on at a later stage. Beech trees can live hundreds of years and can be damaged in storms and this one has been broken more than once in its lifetime.

Allan :)
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