International Electromatics - A Scalescenes Boxfile Layout

[Kettle Master]

"This company, what do they do?"

"International Electromatics? Now, surely you've heard of them?"

"Well...no, we've been a little out of touch..."

"You must have been! They're the worlds biggest electronics manufacturers. You can hardly buy a piece of equipment that isn't theirs!"

The Invasion - 1968

 

---

 

And so begins a project that's started, stopped, restarted, been scrapped, salvaged, scrapped again, contemplated, and then put on hold for the best part of  five years!

 

So, firstly, a little bit of background history:

 

Back during my university days, having only the tiniest amount of space available in my tiny 'shoebox' flat, I used to doodle 00 gauge micro layouts in my spare time. None of them ever got built, but one theme that used to crop up in a few variations that I quite liked was a small warehouse/goods yard titled 'International Electromatics', based around the fictitious electronics company featured in the 1968 Doctor Who story 'The Invasion'.

 

To give a brief summary, this story saw the 2nd Doctor (Patrick Troughton) in what was then present day 1969 investigating the company International Electromatics, where several scientists and electronics experts are seen entering the building, but not coming out again. Through the course of investigations it is found the company run special freight trains from a manufacturing ‘compound’ in the countryside to their main warehouses and offices in London, filled with ‘coffin sized’ boxes. ‘Empties’ are then shipped back ready for reusing. Eventually it is revealed the ‘coffins’ inside the wagons contain dormant Cybermen, which are reactivated in the companies London premises before being unleashed to the sewers, ready for the invasion.

 

Location filming for the scenes in the 'London' and 'Compound' goods yards took place at the old Guinness brewery in London, with warehouses, packing crates and even some Boxvans being daubed with the minimalistic 'IE' logo, providing some nice reference images and footage:

 

 

 

After a few unsuccessful starts and restarts, the idea of building a project on this theme was put on hold, mainly due to lack of time. Now, a few years down the line I have a tad more time on my hands for modelling, but now with even less room than before! As such, pretty much all the previous plans now were too big, leaving me back at square one. Thankfully, just over a month ago, Scalescenes announced the release of their 00 boxfile kit, capable of containing a condensed Inglenook shunting puzzle with a short cassette or sector plate for the main headshunt. I quickly realised this would be perfect for my needs, so that's essentially what this topic is going to be, a general overview as I slowly work my way through the construction. It's not being built strictly to the letter mind, those big blue areas have got to go! Thankfully it's designed to be easily modified in this way.

 

First time at documenting the construction of a layout too. Apologies in advance if my writing seems a little short and to the point or lacking in some areas, it never was my strong point! So it's a good exercise in that regard too!

 

 

It's at this point, for the avoidance of any doubt, I should probably point out that I've no affiliation with Scalescenes in any way, I am but a customer!

 

---

 

Nothing too spectacular for starters, but some important steps (And lessons learned!) all the same!

 

 

As per instructions, a layer of 2mm thick cork sheet has been glued to the base of the boxfile, along with the right hand side being cut away using the constructed jig. Given how much the file itself is going to be butchered during building I'd gone for a somewhat cheaper variation of boxfile. Turns out trying to save a few pennies cost a little bit more work, already I've had to peel back all the vinyl wrapping from the sides, seems it wasn't stuck down all the well.

 

 

Starting to trim the initial layout plan to shape, this is where I encountered a small problem. The pattern is longer than the boxfile! Not much of a problem by itself, but the main trouble arose from not knowing which side to trim! Skipping ahead a few steps showed everything being trimmed from the left hand side, so I followed this practice, marking the position of the doors further in on the plan to help line up the track when it was laid. With any luck, their shouldn't be any major problems when construction goes upwards! Fingers crossed!

 

 

The finished layout plan in the file. Probably worth mentioning that the two sections overlapped each other when put in place, the one on the right requiring a good 5mm trimming off. 

 

 

And this is where we are now. I've gone for a 'best of both worlds' solution for the fiddle yard 'stick'. With this version of the track plan the suggestion is to build up a sector plate, something a little out of my modelling range at the moment. An alternative in another plan is to use the Peco Loco Lift as a sort of traverser, which is the route I've decided to take.

 

Trackwork is a a sole Peco Y insulfrog point and a few recycled sections of Hornby settrack to fill in the blanks. Don't worry, the track will eventually go right up the left hand edge, it just needs trimming to fit. Next steps, cutting the template up to bring the ground level up to track height, cutting a channel for 'wire in tube' point control (Another first for me!) then cutting out channels for some very basic DC wiring.

 

Not the most exciting of starts, but it is one, no less!

[HonestTom]

I like the concept. It looks like that IE logo is a wagon poster, as was common when companies wanted to advertise their wares in BR days. Looks like it could be reproduced pretty easily in black and white on a standard printer. Maybe you could find space for a Hornby or Langley police box?

As railway modellers, we tend to have the opposite problem to the Doctor - our space always turns out to be far smaller than it initially appeared...

[Cheyenne]

Nice start. Can't wait for the next step !

[OhOh]

I would follow this thread, but having never conquered my absolute fear of the Cybermen, I'll have to do so from behind the sofa.

 

Great concept though.

[Cheyenne]

I would follow this thread, but having never conquered my absolute fear of the Cybermen, I'll have to do so from behind the sofa.

Me too !     

[pete_mcfarlane]

I like the concept. It looks like that IE logo is a wagon poster, as was common when companies wanted to advertise their wares in BR days. Looks like it could be reproduced pretty easily in black and white on a standard printer. Maybe you could find space for a Hornby or Langley police box?

 

Including the TARDIS would be very straightforward, as it was invisible during 'The Invasion'.

[Luke123]

Including the TARDIS would be very straightforward, as it was invisible during 'The Invasion'.

 

And being guarded by a field of cows!

 

I love the invasion, its one of my all time favorite stories, i'm looking forward to seeing the completed layout

 

Will you be having a cameo of Vaughn or Packer 'supervising' operations?

[Kettle Master]

I must admit, for such a silly idea I'm quite surprised by the positive response so far, but then again I am a natural pessimist!

 

I like the concept. It looks like that IE logo is a wagon poster, as was common when companies wanted to advertise their wares in BR days. Looks like it could be reproduced pretty easily in black and white on a standard printer. Maybe you could find space for a Hornby or Langley police box?

As railway modellers, we tend to have the opposite problem to the Doctor - our space always turns out to be far smaller than it initially appeared...

Including the TARDIS would be very straightforward, as it was invisible during 'The Invasion'.

 

I was about to comment about the TARDIS exterior being invisible during this story, but it seems Pete pipped me to the post! I suppose it must be the only time where not to include a police box is prototypical. If I remember rightly, I think the exterior was only seen for around fifteen seconds over a three hour story!

 

I would follow this thread, but having never conquered my absolute fear of the Cybermen, I'll have to do so from behind the sofa.

Great concept though.

 

Never fear, there aren't going to be legions of Cybermen swarming over this layout, in fact, not a single one in sight! Though that won't stop a few of the 'coffins' they're transported in from being littered around the loading dock. I did contemplate having a manhole cover askew with a silver arm poking out, but that just seem a bit too silly! 

 

And being guarded by a field of cows!

 

I love the invasion, its one of my all time favorite stories, i'm looking forward to seeing the completed layout

 

Will you be having a cameo of Vaughn or Packer 'supervising' operations?

 

At the moment it's currently on a 'we'll see' basis. By chance I've actually been looking for any suitable figures that could transformed into IE security squad. Now, thanks to the shape of their helmets, I find myself scouring through quite possibly every 00 scale firefighter figure imaginable! 

 

Given this is an inglenook layout, in order to break up what could easily just be a yard full of box vans, another idea I had for a nod to Vaughn was to have a very short flatbed with his car loaded onto it. Returning from repairs or avoiding the congested roads of London? You decide!

 

 

---

 

Mainly intended as a quick project over my Christmas break from work, even I’m surprised as how quickly the layout is starting to go upwards. Here’s the state of play as of last night:

 

 

The hardstanding areas have been cut out, the areas in-between the tracks being raised to allow it to ‘set in’. The areas between the tracks still need a tiny bit of trimming to make them a perfect fit whilst also allowing for rolling stock to easily pass over. None of it has been glued down yet, asI’m making sure the ballasting of the points area comes first.

 

Motive power has also arrived in the form of a class 08, one of the few diesel types I do know by sight! (I’ll hold my hands up, I was brought up as a ‘midland region’ steamer lad!) It feels a little bit strange having this as the only engine intended for the layout, not cause it’s diesel, but because this is a timeframe in railway history that’s never really interested me before. Thankfully though, that means I’ll be learning more than modelling techniques on this project. 

 

I did have a quick look into when the BR blue began as I was more tempted late British Railways green livery these engines wore, and I honestly contemplated having one in that scheme, even more so finding images of them alongside BR blue variants. In the end, there were two deciding factors that led to me going with the latter, firstly, research tells me the blue scheme first started appearing around 66 (I could be wrong, as is the way with the modern internet!) so whilst if the layout was set in 67/68 I might have just been able to get away with a very grubby, heavily weathered version, by 69 I’m fairly certain the older scheme would have been phased out. Secondly, this particular Bachmann model appeared for a fairly reasonable price in my opinion, the only ‘negative’ listed being that it was a noisy runner. Having run it up and down the layout now a good few times, I personally don’t think it’s any noisier than any other engine in my possession. But then again, most of my last engine purchases were well over ten years ago by now!

 

The layout is also now wired up, and even has manual ‘wire in tube’ point control, a first for me, everything prior has been ‘hand of god’. Nothing to spectacular, piano wire threaded through 2mm brass tube, laid through a hole in the boxfile side, then through a trench dug into the cork base, before coming up into the locating hole in the point tie bar. A similar method was used for laying some basic wiring from the tracks to the exterior.

 

This is where I hit a bit of a blunder. It was only after test running for a few hours that I realised the wires connecting power to the rails ‘crossed over’ between the two lines, It seems I wasn’t paying as much attention as I thought when soldering them together! I’m more than happy enough to deal with this slight issue though, further more, it keeps me on my toes when the engine is in the traverser not to switch the direction!

 

Traverser action is achieved using the Peco Loco Lift approach. Apart from needing a sheet of cork fixing underneath at one end to lift it up to ensure the rails at the other end are always touching the live tracks, it works very well.

 

As you can see, construction started on the loading bay interior, so today’s job was creating the exterior wall to glue to the front. I won’t bore everyone by going through every single step, so here a few ‘highlights’ of construction.

 

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Firstly, windows. I didn’t originally plan on simply printing out one of the window templates and glueing it in place, but my earlier plan of salvaging a sheet of windows from a Metcalfe brewery kit didn’t quite go to plan, compared to this factory, that one seems to have many smaller windows, whereas as this has few, but larger. No mater what I tried, the join in the acetate of two smaller windows being made into one would have showed up like a sore thumb.

 

 

Another reason was to hide up the join between the two halves to the loading bay. The left side is the loading bay itself, whereas the right hand side is an empty area, designed as a small storage area behind the scenes. Unfortunately, when joining up the two sections, with how the kit is built, part of the window frame is not only missing one side, but the join shows a good view of a side wall, which would be totally visibly if using acetate sheets as instructed. Using the paper alternative hides this quite nicely. My only regret is not going for a slightly more grubby designed one (There are six grades of grubbiness to choose from supplied!) though I was worried about making it look too derelict, not the look I was going for!

 

 

A thin coat of PVA was added to the window frame, partly to give it a bit more stability, but also to give it a more glossy finish.

 

 

And, in situ. It’s probably worth mentioning at this point that I’ve changed the colour of the doors in this area. This required a bit of Photoshop wizardry as although options to give the conveyer and some of the warehouse buildings different colours, alternate doors for both people and goods aren’t offered, all of them being in blue. Nothing too complicated to change them though, just a case of selection the blue doors on their own, converting them to a monochrome image, then laying a solid block of green colour as an overlay layer.

 

I always knew my animation and illustration degree would come in useful one day!

 

I’ve no doubt there are probably better alternatives out there, but this was the way I was most comfortable going about it. It’s incredible how even with this one door, the roller shutter, and two warehouse doors recoloured, it’s already changed the whole character of the building.

 

“Why green though?” I hear you ask?

 

A total by chance discovery actually. It’s well known the BBC liked to reuse locations for their filming, and ‘The Invasion’ is no exception. Episode 8 saw a short sequence involving a group of Cybermen protecting a beacon sending out signal to their invasion fleet from the factory complex, the sequence ends with the Doctor running out of the yard area, narrowly avoiding the shots from a Cyberman’s gun in the process (Totally unscripted apparently!)

 

 

Notice the metal staircase on the right. Fast forward to 1970, and in Jon Pertwee’s first story ‘Spearhead From Space’, U.N.I.T launch an assault on a plastics factory where mannequins are seen coming to life. And what do they use as cover during the fight? The very same staircase!

 

 

We can see hints of green and black wood panelling just behind the stairs in question. But it doesn’t end there! Back in 1969, in the same scene, the Cybermen make their appearance by bursting through a set of doors (And doing it with enough force to smash the pane of glass on the right hand door it seems!)

 

 

Then again in 1971, the Autons make their appeance, you guessed it, using the exact same set of doors!

 

 

So from this, we can deduce that the International Electromatics factory must have had green doors! Hooray for overanalysing! 

 

Oh, and whilst I was at it the card drainpipes replaced with those from the Wills building detail kit, simply painted black. Another small detail, but just as important.

 

Assembling the concrete abutment capping, it was of some surprise to find that the piece was a good 1mm to small for the wall it was going to sit on!

 

 

I checked everything, where I’d been cutting, the scale the prints were made out of, how this the lower section of wall was meant to be, and missed instructions, but it seems to be that it’s designed like this. I can’t fathom why exactly as everything else matches up perfectly. 

 

 

Not too much trouble to sort out. Some scrap pieces of card leftover were 1mm thick, so these were stuck between the capping and the wall, then coloured with a dark grey marker pen to help blend them in. 

 

Assembling to loading dock brought the opposite problem, this is where the fun began!

 

 

Assembling it up, as per instructions resulted in the loading dock encroaching on the clearance space of the railway, as demonstrated here. There isn’t much clearance anyway, the rails have to avoid the loading dock on the right, whilst also avoiding the footprint for a leg for another building on the left! I started by removing 1mm worth of card from the back of the dock, cutting the platform top down to suit (One area when layering up two 1mm sheets to make the required 2mm sheets comes in handy!) This still wasn’t enough, so another 1mm was removed, this time removing the entire rear support wall for the platform. It was almost there, but just needed a tiny bit more. Unfortunately, without some major knife work there was no way I was going to be able to cut down the platform again, so I had to resort to desperate measures. I had to remove 1mm worth of card from the back of the warehouse wall. It’s out of sight so it hopefully shouldn’t matter. I’m just hoping it doesn’t come to affect the parts of the factory that sit above it too badly when they’re built!

 

 

And here’s the 08 in the platform after this surgery. Everything still looks very close as nothing was glued together at this point, but once it was it also gave a bit more room, it can now trundle up and down the platform line quite happily with no fear of damaging the connecting rods.

 

 

And here we are at the end of the day, complete with green warehouse doors! 

 

Next step is mainly applying a thin layer of PVA to the area to be ballasted to seal it. Compared to the edges of the file, it’s very thin card underneath the cork sheet, I’m not taking any chances! Then it’ll be a case of painting the rails and sleepers, ballasting, and then hopefully the hard standing and loading bay can be finally glued down.

Edited December 24, 2018 by Kettle Master

[Ragtag]

Very interesting idea. As an aside I've found certain Scalescenes kits to be quite sensitive to the thickness of card used - being 0.1 or 0.2mm out caused some issues with my bus garage in similar ways to what you describe as once all the layers are laminated the difference is significant. Perhaps it could be this?

[Charost]

Congrats. It's a wonderful work. I'm following this topic with a great interest.

[ikcdab]

Excellent work. I've just downloaded the same kit, so following your work with great interest!!

[Kettle Master]

Very interesting idea. As an aside I've found certain Scalescenes kits to be quite sensitive to the thickness of card used - being 0.1 or 0.2mm out caused some issues with my bus garage in similar ways to what you describe as once all the layers are laminated the difference is significant. Perhaps it could be this?

 

I've been keeping tabs on this since continuing, with...interesting...results. Initially, it seemed that my choice of PVA was a little too liquid, the result being that the card was soaking a tiny amount and and expanding, as you say, a mere 10th of a millimetre. Changing to a more viscous mix has eliminated this, though I still have to tread carefully when it comes to measurements. In some cases, I'm almost contemplating whether pieces labelled for 'medium card' have accidentally been mislabelled 'heavy card', there does seem to be a lot of it in this particular kit. More so than other Scalescenes kits I've tried. 

 

On the plus side, everything is very sturdy! It's also acting as quite a nice brainteaser of sorts, working out which layers I can strip back whilst still retaining the desired effect in the instructions.

 

---

 

So, after last time I gave the rails and sleepers a quick coat of paint and commenced ballasting, opting for the 'cinders and ashes' approach:

 

 

It actually surprised me just how black it turned out when dry! Perhaps a little too much, but eventually I'm planning on adding a tiny bit of foliage, mainly to disguise some of the rough edges where it meets up with the hard standing. Along with the conveyer that'll go over the top of this area, it should help make it less imposing.

 

One thing that did occur to me when ballasting though was that, if I was to ever attempt a boxfile layout again, I'd probably strip away the thin card base and replace it with something a tad more sturdier, and also something that has less absorption. Despite taking precautions and using the mixture sparingly, a tiny amount of the PVA/water mix managed to seep through. Enough to warp the base ever slightly at the track end edge, but no way near enough to render the trackwork and boxfile useless. Given how bad it could have gone, I think I got away pretty lightly!

 

It actually seems my decision to delay cutting away the front edge of the box is probably what saved it. If I'd simply wedged the off-cut from sector plate opening back in place during ballasting, it may have stop any form of warping whatsoever.

 

Ballasting done, hard standing and loading dock glued in place, it was time to start building upwards! 

 

 

Accept my apologies, I'm one of those people who's constantly forgetting to take photos as they go along, so this is the only photo of actual construction of the building!

 

As mentioned earlier, I've been keeping a closer eye on the thickness of the card as I'm going along now, this is one of the occasions where it seems the assembled pieces were just a tiny fraction to big, or in this case, a whole 4mm too big! I'm noticing it mainly seems to happen when instructed to glue pieces of heavy card into blocks of three (6mm), so now I'm only glueing them into block of two (4mm). Everything's going together much better because of it. 

 

I did originally complete construction of this building in this form, using a couple of black strips on the roof edges to fill the gaps, but it occurred to me that if this building wasn't quite right then there was a good chance the connecting conveyer wouldn't match up right either when it comes to constructing that later on. Modification was incredibly simple. Simply a case of cutting off the two sides of the buildings, prising off 2mms worth of card with the aid of a sharp knife, then reassembling again. The result:

 

 

As always, photos are far more cruel than the naked eye!

 

Another bonus with shortening the width was that the drainpipe now matches up with the on the side of the loading bay, a detail I totally missed and would have probably given me an idea something wasn't quite right if I'd spotted it sooner! Touching up the edges of the roof piece and painting the drainpipes and guttering will get it looking smart again. I should also mention a small modification to the window inserts I've been using. I wasn't quite happy with the 'yellow glow' effect they seemed to be giving so I went over the backs of each one with a dark grey marker pen.

 

There's also a small storage space below this building behind the concrete retaining wall. For any interested, by opening up the top opening just a fraction more, I'm fairly confident you could fit a small box van inside if you so wished.

 

Assembling has now turned to the structures on the left hand side of the layout, starting off with finally cutting the front wall away to give a better view and access. From there, the false doors as glued to the boxfile interior wall to give the illusion of track going further into a factory complex. Atop this sits a small roof structure and the support wall for another building that straddles the loading bay road. Construct is again incredibly simple and very sturdy, though I can't help questioning the construction of the small roof section:

 

 

Again, the boxfile edge needs tidying up, I do apologise!

 

The roof section ends up being glued to the top edge of the boxfile sides. It's constructed in such a way that the main support for the structure is the back wall of the file.

 

 

Sure, it looks nice, and it means everything isn't bordered by a big black edge, but it now means it's impossible to perfectly close the lid back down again.

 

 

I haven't glued it down just yet, there's still some pipework under there that needs painting, but this should give you the general idea. I was under the impression that this piece should be kept loose for packing the layout away, but looking at the example image for that, it's still very much in place, covering the edge of the file.

 

However, it does appear the building on the lower right has the same issue, so at least it isn't a fluke for this one side.

 

I should probably say that incase these posts aren't quite conveying it, I'm very much enjoying myself with project and having a great time working on it. It's quite a nice step back into modelling after a nearly seven year gap! 

 

And so, the state of play as of now. I should probably point out the roof section atop the loading bay isn't glued in place just yet. I've still to add some detailing to the tiny interior and platform:

 

 

Until next time!

[Luke123]

At the moment it's currently on a 'we'll see' basis. By chance I've actually been looking for any suitable figures that could transformed into IE security squad. Now, thanks to the shape of their helmets, I find myself scouring through quite possibly every 00 scale firefighter figure imaginable! 

 

Given this is an inglenook layout, in order to break up what could easily just be a yard full of box vans, another idea I had for a nod to Vaughn was to have a very short flatbed with his car loaded onto it. Returning from repairs or avoiding the congested roads of London? You decide!

 

 

To me, Vaughn seems like the kind of person who would have a private railway carriage, so you could use a 4 wheel coach (repainted into IE livery!) as his own personal stock with his car on a flatbed behind

[Jerry1975]

I like this a lot, very tempted myself.

 

Jerry.

[Vallon]

I like this a lot, very tempted myself.

Jerry.

Me too ! I'm following this very interesting thread.

[CloggyDog]

On ‎24‎/‎12‎/‎2018 at 21:08, Kettle Master said:

I did have a quick look into when the BR blue began as I was more tempted late British Railways green livery these engines wore, and I honestly contemplated having one in that scheme, even more so finding images of them alongside BR blue variants. In the end, there were two deciding factors that led to me going with the latter, firstly, research tells me the blue scheme first started appearing around 66 (I could be wrong, as is the way with the modern internet!) so whilst if the layout was set in 67/68 I might have just been able to get away with a very grubby, heavily weathered version, by 69 I’m fairly certain the older scheme would have been phased out.

 

 

Earliest 350hp repaints into blue were around 1966/67, the standard at the time specifying a brown shade below the footplate. This only last a short while before black running gear became the standard for all subsequent repaints.

 

As for the longevity of the earlier green... well, the last couple of green 08s (by now carrying TOPS numbers) didn't disappear until 1980!

 

So I'd say in 1969 the majority of the 350hp fleet would still be in green, with wasp-striped ends.

 

There were still a few hundred that gained TOPS numbers in the mid-1970s whilst still in green (and 1 still in pre-56 black!) , which were either repainted or withdrawn over the next 5 years leaving the remaining fleet in blue (barring one or two 'celebrity' repaints back into green - Stratford's 08531 being a fairly well-known example)

 

 

Edited February 21, 2019 by CloggyDog

[GWRswindon101]

What about a helicopter like the doctor used to get zoe and isabel out of the international electromatics factory sort of thing? It could help to add a bit more scenic interest/variety