Finally, I have got round to creating the last building required for my Freshwater layout. There were two reasons for the procrastination afforded to this project. Firstly, the building is right at the front of the layout, and would get in the way, or be damaged, when working on other parts of the layout. The second reason was the severe shortage of images or information about the petrol station as it was in the 1940's or 1950's.
Having completed the rest of the layout scenics, excus
'Freshwater' will be on show again next Saturday, 14th April 2018. It will be the first 2mmFS layout to be invited to the East Surrey N Gauge Show at St Joseph’s Catholic Primary School, Linkfield Lane, Redhill, Surrey, RH1 1EA. As usual, I wanted to get a bit more completed after its last exhibition, and next on the list was the Newsagents stand and the signal box. The main part of these buildings were 3D printed by Shapeways, as were most of the other structures on the layout. However, for the
When I moved to a new house, I purchased a shed to house all my model railway stuff. Initially all sorts of junk got stored in there, until I could not even get in the door. After 5 years, some of the junk was removed, and it was used to house some computer servers, poorly cats, spare furniture, etc. Finally, enough room was made to set up Freshwater to work on it (still no room for a chair though).
So, nine years later and the original paintwork was starting to look tired, so I fina
Following general scenic work completed in time for the Basingstoke exhibition, a start has been made on some detailing and buildings. One important detail item is the starting signal. Fortunately there is only the one proper signal on the layout, as it has taken 6 months to build it. The two ground signals required will be another story.
I wanted to build a typical SR rail-built upper quadrant signal, operational of course. I purchased some etched brass signal boards, counterweights
At the Basingstoke show, the only building on the layout was a Ratio SR concrete PW hut. There are only four other major buildings required to complete the layout, but all will need to be scratch built. I started trying to create drawings for the station building, using a 3D drawing package, but the more I did, the more I thought about 3D printing the building instead of using plasticard and printed paper as I had orginally intended. The complex decorative brickwork would be really difficult to
Freshwater station only has one platform, but it was extended at various times over the years. The first section by the buffers where the locomotive would stand is very low with plain brick facing. It then ramps up to a more normal height. The next section is typical Southern Railway concrete panels from the Exmouth Junction concrete works, while the latest extension used the Southern Railway lightweight concrete trestles, more standard components from Exmouth Junction.
Modelling the
