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 stations.

The building as many will recognise is a slightly altered Scalescenes free warehouse. I hid the raised platform area and simplified the roof a little. The concrete yard is the base for the model as supplied.

The transformer was scratch built from card and copper wire. The oil tank is of an old Dapol class 04 shunter kit I had lying around. The whole thing was sprayed in a dull silver and will be weathered down a little once all is dry.

The yard is also home to a switch room. This is an old demountable trailer from an EFE circus kit, sprayed in dull silver with a black roof. I think it works well with its various doors and panels.

Other work recently has included laying more 3rd & 4th rail and painting and weathering it. This includes painting on the white ends and blobs of browny-white to represent the insulators. I find the Peco ones just too tall for fitting the 4th rail and really hard to weather in to the track.

Next project (Tomorrow with any luck) is an embankment around the curve into the terminal station. None of this area has been photographed yet, but track is laid and painted, with most ballasting complete. The test build of the Scalescenes roof is also complete and might well remain as part of the final layout as the dodgy bits of my build will be hidden by a road bridge and high level station. I will try to get some pictures up tomorrow.

I also need to decide what to do with the semicircular area between the depot and terminus. I originally planned another small town scene, but this is not really in keeping with the suburban feel of the layout. With the launch of the Metcalfe semi detached houses, my current thoughts are for 4 or 5 of these build around a crescent, possible with a small row of shops leading to the station. All very Metro Land !