The Shankly and Gdynia Railway

[Bandit Mick]

Lots of great work - well done. Out of interest - what type of points are you using - live or insulfrog?

[Walkingthedog]

The points by the UD wagons in the last set of pictures are insulfrog.

[IanAlan]

Hi BM, yes WTD is correct, they are insulfrog. To be honest when I acquired them (mostly second-hand), I wasn't aware of the difference. There are some very elderly Triang points in the outer oval and branch line that runs from it.

The sun came out briefly today, so I got snapping.

Days of Steam and Diesel

[IanAlan]

It's a bittersweet moment for me as we enter the last few hours while Liverpool FC are Champions of Europe - until the next time.

Here are some photos celebrating one of my favourite moments in the 2019 final - 24 seconds into the match.

PENALTY!






And that really is the last of my football photos. You can see that I opted out of building the stadium, so if you think it looks like a Sunday league match, I can't really argue. Now I'm going to sit back and watch this year's final, which will at least be less stressful, though ultimately less satisfying, than last year's.

[IanAlan]

Diesel and Steam

[Chops]

Never seen an OO football match before! Super!

[IanAlan]

Hi Chops,
I'm surprised about that. The figures are Noch Footballers and Fans. I believe Noch is a German company although I haven't checked that, so perhaps it's a more common theme in mainland Europe. These figures are sold as OO / HO, but they look more HO to me. They are stick insect thin. If my memory serves me correctly, your layouts have (had) cricket matches and fox hunters on them, so you are pretty sporty yourself (assuming fox hunting qualifies as sport). And very nice they look.

And here's a random photo.

Horses and Trains

[Chops]

I’ve seen one other OO cricket match, to which I thought, ‘I’ve got to do that.’
It was very nice to find these metal cricketers, by Langely, if memory serves.
Supposedly they sell enough t make it worth the effort, but I’ve yet to see
them anywhere else, including the marvelous fox hunters.

The other cricket match had only an empty field made from billiard cloth.

[IanAlan]

Chops,
Of course, it's not just model railway enthusiasts that make model scenes, so there's a market for sporting figures. You mention the cricket field being made from billiard clothe, I just used thin card. Interestingly, a full size professional pitch at 1/76 scale or even 1/87 would be over a metre in length. You can see that I scaled mine down to fit the available space in the middle of the oval tracks. Another reason it looks like a Sunday League game. As I'd like to keep the football players on the layout for a while, I'm reinventing the game as a local match between the fictional Shankly Reds FC and some other team. Now it's a pleasant background feature to the trains.

Match Day Services

[Puddles]

Sunday league football, Weill that bought back some memories of Hackney Marshes in the late 1960s.
Great pictures and the pitch looks really good.
Puddles