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Saltdean - LBSCR in 0 gauge


kirtleypete
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How splendid! The Myres stations are a most attractive design, and the fact that each building contractor adapted the basic design to suit the station site makes each more individual. Lavant is the tallest, I think.

 

A layout to watch.

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After the best part of twenty years building layouts based on foreign prototypes, it's time for a change - my last British layout was Ramsgate Harbour in the 1990's. This time I've moved along the coast to the Brighton area and Saltdean, though only the name will bear any relation to the real place.

 

As ususal this will be an exhibition layout; I've pretty much settled now on 20' long, it's big enough to enjoy but small enough to transport and store. The imminent arrival of the Dapol Terrier was very much an influence on choosing the LBSCR, especially when I saw they were doing in in Stroudley livery. 

 

This is how my first thoughts are shaping up, though no doubt it will change as time goes on. 

 

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The scenic area will be 16' by either 2' 6" or 3'. The plan says 1885 but I may well bring the period into the 1890's to allow me to use the Billington wagon lettering, and so the Myers station building can be tile hung rather than having the plaster panels used when they were first built. 

 

Talking of which..............

 

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i can't begin work on the layout yet but I have made a start on the station building, based on Lavant with a few alterations to suit what I want. It's the Myers design of station but higher than normal because of the lie of the land; from the road side it looks conventional.  I like it because it's different and on a small layout you have to have something to catch the eye. It's not finished, but here are some pictures of how it is looking so far:

 

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I'll post more pictures when the station building is finished, and then when the layout is under way I'll tell the tale as it progresses, warts and all!

 

Peter

Beautiful model! Just oozes character

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Thanks for the comments - I must admit I think these buildings take some beating. I've built models of them four times before, but never for myself. 

 

Mikkel, the canopy is made from plastic card with strrips of plastic for the battens, then it was covered with aluminium foil stuck on with Evostick. This was painted with Tamiya RLM grey, then dry brushed with matt white enamel paint.  This is the best way I have found of modelling the lead sheet on the real canopy. The valancing is one of my own etchings, based on the original design at Sheffield Park before it was reduced in height by the Southern. 

 

Peter

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What a beautiful building – I like Myers' station designs - so perfect for their locale. When I first saw this building I thought of Newick & Chailey that is a similar staggered level station. The quality of your modelling is superb – the precision to which you work has given an excellent result. I shall be watching this with great interest.

Edited by Anglian
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In the poist today came a copy of the first Middleton Press book on the lines to Midhurst, in which there are two cracking pictures of Lavant station building in the 1880's showing the parts which are covered by trees in later pictures. Naturally my model is wrong!

 

Never mind, it's spot on for Saltdean.................

 

Peter

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In the poist today came a copy of the first Middleton Press book on the lines to Midhurst, in which there are two cracking pictures of Lavant station building in the 1880's showing the parts which are covered by trees in later pictures. Naturally my model is wrong!

 

Never mind, it's spot on for Saltdean.................

 

Peter

Always the way...

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I'm nearly at the stage of beginning work on the baseboards, and I'm not sure about the best way to proceed.

 

The layout is going to be 20' long by 2' 9" wide. The legs were going to be timber, hinged to fold up under the boards. That makes the boards heavy. Instead I'm going to use plastic trestles by Stanley (sold in pairs as a saw horse) which are light, fold flat, are nice and steady when unfolded and give a baseboard height of three feet - just what I want. 

 

That being the case, I'm now wondering whether to have four boards five feet long or five boards four feet long. My instinct is to have a few board joins as possible, but of course I do have to be able to lift them!  The weight saved by not having the legs could mean the five foot board is perfectly feasable, and I think the only way to be sure is to make one and see. I can always reduce it to four feet if necessary. I use 12mm ply for the top surface and 9mm ply for the backscene, with timber framing; I'm lucky as we have a traditional timber merchant in the town who are happy to cut all the ply to the correct size.  

 

As the layout is mainly going to be track a flat baseboard is all I want as a starting point. 

 

There is one problem; if I use four five foot boards I only need five trestles...and they're sold in pairs!

Peter

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i've pretty much finished off the station building - some more pictures are below. 

 

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Sorry about the dustbins! From this side it looks very much like a standard Myers station, which is why I like it so much.....it's almost an optical illusion. 

 

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The carved stone above the right hand window is simply taken from a photo of the window at Sheffield Park.

 

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The stained glass windows on the porch are simply printed on paper and stuck in place - it had to be done on both sides of course. 

 

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I've added some more detail under the canopy too. 

 

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The figures are Omen, bought ready painted. If I practiced for the next ten years I still wouldn't be able to paint figures as well as that so it's money well spent.

 

The next thing is to make the first baseboard, and then the station can be fixed in place but first I want to have it on my stand at Cleckheaton 0 gauge show in a months time. 

 

Peter

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As I have no stock to run on Saltdean yet I've made a start on some wagons ...then at least when I start track laying there will be something to play with!  All the wagons are going to be built from scratch as the available kits seem to be of later versions and I want my stock to be the early Stroudley and Craven designs. 

 

They are built in plastic card using the Slaters MR wagon chassis kit for the running gear. 

 

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This is a Stroudley brake van and a covered van; they are just posed on a small diorama I made up to display stock as I build it. The brake has a brass roof as I happened to have a piece the right size, but I had to use 1mm plastic sheet for the van.

The van chassis had a 9' 9" wheelbase, so the solebars had to be extended. 

 

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I've built two different round ended opens and a dumb buffered ballast wagon. In my period the wooden brake blocks were gradually being replaced with cast iron ones so I've modelled some of each. Don't look too closely at the axle boxes; I was just using up oddments I had left over but they can be replaced later if I feel I need to.....frankly once they are painted black I will probably leave them as they are, with a whole layout to build I've enough to do and when the wagons are on the layout no one is going to be looking that closely at the axle boxes. 

 

Here are a couple of close-up shots,

 

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I'll post some more pictures once I've painted them of course.

 

Peter

Edited by kirtleypete
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Peter, fantastic! 

 

Great to see another pre-grouping layout, and not a GWR one :) My plans are similar to yours (though SER based), though will be even more fictional. Being in the US, however, I doubt anyone who ever sees it will know.

 

Your books were one of the factors that had me finally settle on 7mm, am slowly starting on my first scratch build of a SER station, using your methods.

 

Looking forward to seeing and reading about your progress.

 

Jim F

Edited by JimF51
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Likewise Jim; I used to model the SECR but it was the Chatham side of things I'm afraid. Good luck with your layout and keep us posted as it progresses. 

 

GWR...wasn't that a little tramway somewhere down in the west country?!!

 

Peter

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O (0?) is such a good scale. Even small things have presence (that somehow translates into a photograph on a computer screen...).

 

I think the GWR was a minor branch from the LSWR at Exeter. Though I might be thinking of Yeovil. Utterly inconsequential either way  :jester:

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I think 0 is the perfect compromise, big enough to see but small enough to fit a fair amount in. The figures look like real people in this size, for instance. 

 

I've decided to take the bold step of using metric baseboards for the first time...having done some sums (all right, used an online conversion site)  a 5' board is 1500mm, 2' 9" wide is 840mm and a 15" high backscene board is 380mm....good enough for me. Hopefully I can get the wood cut for the first two this week,

 

Peter

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The transfers have arrived from Powsides for the LBSCR illiterate symbols so these have been added to the wagons. I was a bit disappointed that the blue circles weren't included, just the red and white shields. My blue circles were hand painted which is why they are a bit large. They symbols certainly look attractive, and I've also weathered the wagons lightly. More transfers are on order for the lettering and numbers which can be added later. 

 

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The white roofs were toned down with weathering powders, then sprayed with Dullcote.

 

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Peter

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I've done some more work on the wagons today - I posted a big model to the US yesterday so today is recovery time! 

 

I've made up a little flat wagon with a furniture container; I've redone the LBSC logo/illiteracy symbol on the computer and on the model it is just printed on paper and stuck in place...not ideal but it is correct now and at least they'll all be the same. The chalked board was done the same way. 

 

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The container was done by cladding a simple plastic card box with printed paper, done using Serif Pageplus like this.....

 

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I just made the container to fit the wagon. The side and end artwork were done first, then a photo of a planked surface was placed over the top. This was made more and more transparent until the artwork underneath showed through but the planks could still be seen. It was printed off onto gloss photo paper, cut out, glued to the plastic box and then sprayed with Dullcote - easy! The roof was rolled from a sheet of thin brass and painted. I have to admit that my container has no doors, so I'll redo one end and add those now I know the technique works. As long as you only look at one end at a time It's OK! 

 

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It need some ropes and lashing rings to finish it off properly. 

 

Then I started wondering what else I could do in a similar way.......

 

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I'm going to want some PO wagons based at my fictional station so here's the artwork for the first one, done in just the same way. The wagon body was made up from plastic card, and the printed sides were stuck in place:

 

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Then the strapping was added, cut from Slater's embossed rivets sheet and glued in place with Evostick. It was then painted black. The lettering which is covered by the strapping has then to be painted in, which is why my wagon has no diagonal strapping!

 

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Here is the second wagon:

 

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i need to order some more underframe kits from Slaters so I can finish them off. 

 

The beauty of this method is that it can be used for any scale; in 2mm I would print the strapping as well. 

 

Doing multiples is easy too, just change the number on the artwork and print off another sheet. The look of the wagon can be varied by increasing or decreasing the transparency of the planking. The best thing of all is how cheap they are compared with kits, and you end up with unique models.

 

I'm going to need half a dozen beer vans for my brewery, so that's going to be the next wagon. Watch this space!

Peter

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That's really quite impressive, I'm amazed that the lettering even seems to 'dip' in between planks if you see what I mean. Very clever.

 

The station building is a work of art too. I think I remember Ramsgate Harbour from a Railway Modeller article?

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You've got a good memory if you do!  It must have been in the Modeller in the late 1990's I would think. That was the layout that cured me of modelling a prototype station, it looked great but operationally it was awful! I could have done something much more interesting in the same space. Mind you, if we'd had DCC them it might have been better as the trains could have been double headed or banked.  Never mind, it's long gone now and I seem to be gradually moving along the south coast.

 

Peter

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I've finally been able to make a start on the actual layout, and already I've made changes from the original plan. This is the first baseboard:

 

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The surface is 12mm ply - I have learned the hard way that an exhibition layout needs a good solid baseboard that will put up withg being taken in and out of vans for the next five years or so. The backscenes are 9mm ply and the framing is timber 3" deep. My local timber merchant cuts the ply for me so it is exactly the right size.....pretty much like a baseboard kit really. The baseboards are going to stand on plastic trestles from Stanley, sold as a saw horse...they are light, strong, easy to store and transport and not expensive. 

 

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The retaining walls around the station building have been 'sketched in' with timber and the approach road to the end loading dock installed using hardboard. The station building isn't fixed in place at this stage,

 

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Because the station building is higher than the backscene an additional piece of ply will have to be attached to the backscene to protect it when it is transported. 

 

That's as much as I can do until the track arrives, other than making the second baseboard of course.

 

Peter

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