There has been a useful thread in the card structure modelling forum.
I have been working on the free Metcalf signal cabin from RM Jan 2012 as a gate box for Jenswell.
Source: Free Signal Box from Railway Modeller January- Lets see them.
A couple of weeks ago we visited the Great Central Railway at Rothley station in Leicestershire.
The station is run as it was in 1912 with gas lights and coal fires.
The station staff made us very welcome and were happy to answer all our (mainly Jenn's) questions.
As I've mentioned before, Jenn is hot on social history and how people actually lived and do things.
We were very impressed with the set-up there and spent much of the day just exploring a relatively small station.
At some point w
Between Christmas and building and decorating work in our house, Jenswell had been put out of the way for a while.
Now we've got room to set it up again and do some work.
The points are operated using MSE wire-in-tube.
The w-i-t's were initially pinned to the slab.
I have now stuck them down with self adhesive address labels.
These work on the ply deck but came unstuck on the painted foam slab. i willhave to try some PVA to stick the sticky labels down!
Strangely they seem to stick pret
Most of my posts on Jenswell blogged so far actually occurred before we got the Hull Show invite.
I still have a fair bit to recap before I get up to date, including buildings built, vehicles acquired and track laying/laid.
However, I thought I would take this opportunity to post our latest progress before I forget about it.
Between two weekends and four days off work for Christmas/New Year I was hoping we might get rather more done than we achieved.
Ha! So much for that idea!
But w
We angled the track layout so it's not running parallel with the board edge.
This also helps us get a bit more in and seems to make better use of the space.
We have decided to use wire-in-tube for the point control.
I have some bits from MSE already.
Electrical wiring should be very simple, as I expect to run only one engine 'in steam' .
The yard is completely seperate from the through track. If we want to transfer stock, we will have to use a loco-lifter.
I intend putting in a
A very quick follow up to our last post
I started setting out track and points on a slab of pink foam to see what we could fit in.
Extruded foam from B&Q packs of four sheets each 1200x500x50 mm.
This will be the base board for our layout with a light-ply deck for the track.
I was rather pleased to find that the three sidings gave us a classic 5-3-3 Inglenook.
This makes the layout more usable as a shunting puzzle.
We have photos too !
Whilst our initial goal is to have a layout ready for Hull Show, we also want to have the layout usable at home. This means it needs to be fairly small and tidy when not in use as a railway.
Croft Depot suited both requirements, also the way it was operated from the front with plenty of opportunity for interaction with show visitors fitted our view of railway modeling as a social activitY.
We decided to build something similar.
We were looking at a small shunting layout built into a fou
We are Chris and Jennifer Nicole, modeller and better-half living in Hull.
We visited Hull MRS's mini show at Paragon Station in August where Jennifer won a Blue Highlander Hornby train-set on the raffle.
One of my colleagues in Hull MRS challenged us, "If you build a layout with that, we'll show it."
They know too well my tendancy to get enthusiastic over a new project then run out of steam before achieving much.
I have too many ideas and no decision.
Jennifer is made of different me
