Has it really been a year ? Blimey !
Things have moved on a bit. More stock has arrived. A Calder Valley 110 3 car DMU. These never made it out of T'Valley (Those Northern folk knew when they were on to a good thing!), but they would have been a fantastic suburban DMU as well. More powerful than most of its peers and according to those that drove it, fantastic brakes. This one has been DCC'd and has had the wheels adjusted to actually run through pointwork - they were nearly 3mm too narrow.
I spent a rare day off last week adding to the scenery around the layout. first stop was the Depot, with a gravel / dark cinder covering with lots of scrubby cover. Yard lights and shunt signals will follow.
The areas around the yard approach and the terminus station have also been started, with the basic shape defined and the first layer of grass matt and scrub applied. This area will have a small town scene, with a parade of shops and a crescent of houses. The idea is to create a suburban
It seems the carriage works have been busy, turning out both an A60 & an R Stock in a period of little more than 2 weeks.
Neither are fully finished, so any passengers will have to stand in the windowless shells, but they are moving under their own power and have had first coats of paint.
Being Harrow Model Shop / Radley models kits, they are seriously heavy and the spuds are sweating a bit...
I could not afford to buy a sub-surface train, so considered my options.
The Street Level Designs card kits give a reasonable rendition of the model, especially after a bit of work.
This is the MK1 creation. The basic kit has had the windows cut out and replaced with plastic, the doors cut out and recessed and the whole shell thickened up with 3 layers of 450 GSM card.
The chassis will either be a scratch built brass creation or for the time being, an old coach chassis and bogies. A
As my layout is set in the suburbs, lots of shops and houses are a must. I wanted a modern shopping parade, the sort of thing that was thrown up in the 60s and 70s with no thought to architecture, just practical design.
I designed these on PowerPoint 2010. This is not a full blown illustrator type product, but allows some fairly powerful basic design to be carried out. If you would like to use the design, feel free. The link is here: http://www.mattjarvisassociates.co.uk/page5.html
Ther
I wanted a small building to fill in some of the waste ground behind the low level station. I liked the idea of some sort of machine room for the station, so came up with the idea of a compressor room and transformer. London Underground points are mainly powered by compressed air. The big pipes running beside the track do not carry electricity as many people assume, but air for the points. Compressors and driers are situated at various sites around the network, often at junctions or close to sta
