I have the in laws visiting the baby this evening, which will give me a couple of hours off baby duty and let me get into the workshop.
My plan is to get on with an eBay purchase of a slatters clestory d14,
While it's the toplights I am really after, getting this kit at a good price was too good to miss. The intention being to use it as part of a summer Sunday special.
Looking at the kit there's tons of detail, although most of the main plastic parts are badly bowed (is this common wi
Taking advantage of yesterday's bank holiday I have got on and finished the main work on the bridge. The rear face has had the main brickwork added forming the outer face, wing walls and side wall. I have decided to leave off the fine detailing making up the arch and some of the other fancy brickwork, simply because I am running out of plastic and it will be easy enough to add later should the layout get extended.
The final area which will need work in the near future is adding the top ca
Final progress before I head off to Tignes & Val D'isere for a week.
The bridge is coming along very nicely. Starting of with the deck, this is 80thou plasticard glued into position with Evostick. It was glued roughly into the centre of the bridge structure with a 10mm gap either side (simply because it wasnt wide enough!) pavements were added from more 80thou (giving a 6inch curb) this had curb stones carved into the edge before gluing into place.
Once that was dry the next step
A little more progress before work this morning, A quick test showed that it dosnt appear to need a central arch to support the brick work, the two arches along with the vertical at the bottom are enough to do the job on their own.
As a result I took a simpler option for adding the deck support, with a length of 80thou across the centre above the hight of the arch, and a triangular cross brace between the corner and the central spacer.
I am now debating whether or not I will use the same
Made a start on the road bridge at the station end of the layout today, with the construction of the core structure.
This is built from 80thou plasticard as a pair of boxes with the two arches connecting them. Once this is fully dry a central divider will be fitted to each side (along with a third arch) which will give further support to the 80 thou deck once it is added.
This will then be clad in South East Finecast embossed brick plastic (the prototype I have based it on appears to ha
Little bit of work managed on the layout this evening, making a start on the Ratio footbridge, the central span is a little bit longer than it ideally would be (but its near enough that it can be worked round rather than having to start hacking it about even more.)
Because I am building the 5 panel version, it left bits for a 6th panel spare, this was used to give the extra span between the steps and the embankment.
The plan now is to get this section painted, paint the panels and roof su
Having finally got some embossed brick plastic from South East Finecast at Nottingham yesterday, I've cracked on with building the signal box.
This is a fairly accurate representation of the box at Botley, although it has been built as a mirror image of the prototype so that it can be located on the other side of the mainline, I also made a slight mistake with the location of the lower door (my drawings I had created were exact for the prototype and I forgot to allow for that when cutting pl
A little more work on the buildings for the layout,
Next step is starting to clad in the south east finecast block sheet, (which will hide the gaps between panels) after which I can get on with the detailing the sides. The roof will be the last thing to go on (given that the overhang will make access to the sides a bit more difficult to get at.)
A little more design work on buildings for the backsceen, with a continuation of work on the retail park.
This is the style of structure I am going for
Although it is based upon the rear of the building (which if i remember correctly is completely block built construction rather than clad in metal), my design is slightly different to the prototype in the radius of the roof (I started building it years back pre google earth, so the dimensions were all estimated from this photo. I have now
A little more work on drawings. a first draft of the bridge at the station end, working from a couple of photos of the prototype at Botley and dimensions from Google Earth.
The second drawing from todays work is the signal box, again based upon the prototype at Botley. Makes an interesting prototype with the boarded up windows, door falling off, along with the various wires & lights on the end. The boarded up windows are also rather handy avoiding having to model the windows!
This post will make a lot more sense to those who have a copy of 'Bridges for Modellers' by L.V. Wood........
I've been spending some time today thinking about what to do with the 3 bridges on the layout.
For the bridge at the platform end I have decided to go with something very similar to the prototype at Botley, in having an arch bridge of brick construction with no wing walls. As with the prototype the gap between the inside of the arch and the edge of the platform will be quite tig
Everything is still going very slowly with the layout, again mostly down to the fact that I wont pay over the top postage just to buy a single jar of flux.....
End result - I cant do any track laying.....
I have made a start on building the bufferstop for the branch platform, using an old mainly trains brass kit. So far I have binned the majority of it leaving me with the two sides, along with a left over length of bullhead rail. This said the side castings are still rather crude, so im get
Things have slowed up rather recently, in part down to spending more time working on modelling stock after getting rather carried away working on Clan Line, coupled with the lack of a non acidic flux.
I have been making progress on track building, with the majority of the exactoscale track for the mainline built and ready to glue down. Unfortunately lack of said flux is rather holding things up at the moment, so I guess I really aught to get on and order some (I wish I had remembered this at
With the baseboards sorted and the trackplan pretty much finished, its time to start looking at track...
As mentioned in the outline, my method of satisfying the '5 things for 5 years of RMWeb' is the use of 5 different types of plain track.
This includes:
Bullhead rail with wooden sleepers and BR chairs - Modelled using Exactoscale chairs and sleeper bases with the latter modified to remove the webbing between the sleepers. This will have track feeds following Jim S-W's design here.
C
Well, I've tried playing with templot, and sadly havent had much success with the platform modifications.
Thanks to some information on DEMU and some diagrams from the Scalefour Society I was able to confirm how wide the platform should be. Unfortunately after completing both of my planned modifications (shifting the point back and increasing the curve on the platform track) I still have not been able to get the width of the platform to comply with even the minimum standards (let alone those
Not a whole lot more has been accomplished since I posted the introduction yesterday, but there has been one pretty significant issue come up. As mentioned earlier I have based the trackplan on that at Botley to the point where its a pretty accurate representation.
The problem has come with the branch platform, which on the prototype is just a headshunt which runs parallel with a platform. the problem is that this requires a much wider platform in order to satisfy the requirements
(its curren
A new blog for a new project, given that Bodmin is now officially on hold for the foreseeable future, I've now got on with my new project, 'Un named Junction' The idea behind it has been discussed in its companion topic here, in short it is a terminus station with branch line allowing operation in a similar way to what I would have had on Bodmin, however the station is designed to allow future expansion to be a full continuous run layout. The track plan is based upon Botley on the southern regio
