Stourpayne Marshall - Jinty and goods shed etc.
Some recent low-stress modelling on Stourpayne Marshall:
This Bachmann Jinty was renumbered to a Bath example and then weathered. It came with "British Railways" lettering which I was reluctant to remove, even though I don't have any evidence that this particular loco carried that scheme. A number of S&D locos did, though, right through until 1953 or so, so it's not obviously out of place.
It runs smoothly, and incredibly quietly, but I can''t get it to start and stop at as low a speed setting as I'd like with the decoder - some tweaking is called for as I suspect
it's down to motor feedback variables and so on.
In this picture the Jinty has just arrived with the branch goods, coming in off the junction to the south of the station.
This branch has really added to the play-value of the layout, I've found. It gives a reason for shunting the goods yard and enables stock
to be swapped between sessions, adding to the variety. With the run-round facilities at the station, the typical train is just six wagons
and a brake. Longer trains can be run-round, but it becomes a bit of a faff as the engine has to use the junction itself, rather than remaining
within the station area.
What happens after the yard has been shunted is that an up goods will then arrive on the main and do some picking up and dropping off
of its own. Down goods can also collect or drop off wagons from the yard, Last week I added a couple more uncoupling magnets which now
means that - in theory - it can be all be done hands-off. And 90% of the time, the Spratt & Winkles play ball. Now and then there's a sticky
coupling or an unwanted uncoupling incident, but the reliability is good enough to be satisfying to me.
Onto the goods shed:
As mentioned in an earlier post, I wasn't all that enamoured of the Bachmann model out of the box. I felt that the doors were clumsy, and there was something wonky about
the windows on the front, especially the one on the left. It's not also clear to me what the building is based on, as I've yet to see drawings or photos of the Shillingstone shed,
and it's certainly not extant now. Someone suggested that it looked very like the Midsomer Norton building.
Whatever, it doesn't really matter as the layout isn't meant to be Shillingstone, so as long as it can be made to look semi-plausible in its setting, it'll be fine.
In any case the doors and their associated sliding fixtures were removed and disposed of, and new ones made up from plastic card, as seen above. They're much less chunky
than the originals and the slidey-bits are also a little finer. I also made sure that the slides were level, as that wasn't the case with the original.
However, I do need to add a strip along the base of the doors that cover the railed entrances, as there's a bit too much of a gap at the bottom. I made the mistake of taking the
measurements off the originals.
I also addressed the windows, which didn't turn out to be too hard. The more wonky of the two was the one on the left, which had a distinct lean to the right. After removing the window, I could see that the plastic glass hadn't been trimmed back neatly to the etched frame, so that it couldn't sit straight even if it wanted to. That took care of some of the lean, and the rest of it was addressed by gently grinding away some of the resin around the window recess, creating just enough room to let it sit vertically. This results in a slight gap between the stonework and the window, but it's barely worth the trouble of filling in, so I'll likely not bother.
The right window was addressed similarly, but needed less correction.
The stonework on the recessed portions still has a bit of a slope to it, for some reason, but it draws the eye much less than the wonky windows. All in all, I was very happy with how easy it was to fix this most glaring fault with the model.
In earlier shots of the goods yard, there's sometimes been a Provender store tucked next to the shed. As much as I liked the store, and it did seem to sit quite well in that position, I've now decided to leave it out. Not only did it block the road access to the shed, but I think the yard needs to be given as much room to breathe as possible. It's a shame as I'd really like to include the store somewhere, but perhaps something will eventuate in the future.
With the shorter main siding of the layout in this configuration, the more space the better.
I quite like this sleepy, not-much-happening view of the yard. Although the wagon capacity is down compared to King's Hintock, there's still plenty of space for some interesting shunting sessions.
The last two views, above, show developments on the down platform. I'd cheated a bit with the valencing on the shelter, using "horizontal" valencing on the sloping sides, but that's now been corrected and although it's a small touch, I think it helps with the model.
The other structures seen here are all very much open to being removed or reworked. The gents toilet is the Wills kit cut down, and with a tin roof added, but I don't think it really works in this context. Presumably the passengers would have been expected to make use of the facilities attached to the main building on the up platform, rather than the gents having a urinal all to themselves. What do you think?
I've also added some lamp huts, since I had a pack of Wills ones going spare. These are GWR pattern ones I believe, but the Southern used reasonably similar looking structures (as in corrugated sides and a curved roof) so I feel they'll do the job for the time being, especially once they've been properly painted and weathered. I found a photo of an example at Ropley which was painted overall green rather than cream and green, so that's what I've gone for. I think what will happen eventually is that the toilet will go, and the greenhouse and cold frames (see above, next to the Jinty) will end up more or less in the same position as the urinal, on this side of the fencing rather than beyond it.
Lots to think about anyway, but all good fun in the end.
Thanks for reading!
Edited by Barry Ten
-
14
-
1
-
2
7 Comments
Recommended Comments
Create an account or sign in to comment
You need to be a member in order to leave a comment
Create an account
Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!
Register a new accountSign in
Already have an account? Sign in here.
Sign In Now