Leaderboard

When it comes to railway buildings, there is nothing more iconic than the signal box. Therefore, my second building project for Aylesbury Town (Risborough & District Model Railway Club) was not a difficult choice. Aylesbury South signal box was a Great Central design, 35ft in length, 12ft wide and contained 55 levers. The top half of the box still exists at Swithland Sidings on the Great Central Railway at Loughborough. I was unable to obtain any drawings of the box but there was a good abundance of photographs on Flickr. I purchased the Bachmann version, thinking I might be able to kit bash it. However, it proved too short in length. Nevertheless, the Bachmann model proved useful in obtaining some of the detail dimensions. I drafted up a drawing of the indivdual model parts using Microsoft Visio software. The parts were produced using the Club's laser cutter. I believe laser cutting will be as revolutionary for model buildings as DCC has been for model trains. The quality of the finished product is exceptional. Even the tiny brackets supporting the exterior walkboards are accurate and crisp. I was however, disappointed with the cladding effect to the main outer walls. I therefore decided to recreate the original by overlapping 10mm strips of printer paper. A similar method was used to recreate the roof tiles. The main walls were also joined with paper in order to mask the corner joints. All parts were sprayed with Humrol white primer. The window frames were painted in a matt white and plastic glazing added. I searched long and hard to replicate the cream exterior finish. I the end I plumbed for Crown Classic Cream emulsion from a tester pot that I had. The faded Midland red also proved difficult to recreate. For this I chose a mix of Precision Paints Light Red Brick, Railmatch BR Maroon and a dash of matt white. The interior floor was painted with Humbrol gloss tan, which represented the polished finish so common in well maintained boxes. The nameboards were recreated using 2mm Wills lettering. Particular care had to be taken to ensure the letters did not break when cutting them from the sprue. My favourite part of the exercise was to model the interior. This was recreated from two Ratio kits, suitably detailed and painted. I was only able recreate 40 of the 55 levers due to the available length inside the box. Nevertheless, the lever configuration was accurately represented based upon available photographs of the original interior. The track diagram was also accurately recreated by editing a photograph of the original plan. The doors were added and the walls were joined together to create the box structure, using the floor as a stiffner. Details such as the exterior walkboards, window sills and even the horseshoe at the box entrance were fixed into position. The stairs were produced using Ancorton Models kit, suitably modified to replicate the original structure. Roof guttering, drain pipes and the corner supports were represented using 1.5mm half round brass section, 1/16th diameter aluminium rod and 3mm by 1mm brass U section; all respectively from Eileen's Emporium. The drain pipes at the north end of the box flowed into a hopper, which was recreated from a Rememberance Day poppy head, suitably modified. The chimney was modeled from 2mm diameter brass tube, soldered together to form a Tee section. GWR Scale Link finials were modified to more closely resemble the GC pattern and fitted into position. The finished model was weathered using acrylic paints. The final job is to add interior lighting, which I intend to do using LED bulbs.

Over the last fortnight I've taken the plunge and done some fairly major reworking of the spring module. It used to be single track, but now it's double, which - given that there were already two running lines through the main summer module - means that there is now only a short stretch of single track anywhere on the layout. It's been a lot of messy work, and so the obvious question is - why? One answer is that I've always fancied seeing running of the bigger locomotive classes, such as Castles and Kings, and these always looked a little out of place on the old layout, even allowing for such things as the Kingswear branch. A second answer is that I wasn't quite happy with the sharp reverse curve of the original single track course, which worked fine for smaller engines but resulted in the larger classes looking a little ungainly as they negotiated the bends. Once this T9 crosses the brook, it has to swing to the right to gain the right route for exiting the module - a swerve which looked fine when I laid the track, but gradually came to annoy me. But all of those turned out to be secondary considerations! The main one was a nagging drawback with the fiddleyard. As originally designed - and to be fair it's served me well enough for eight years - it consisted of six double-ended storage loops. Fine enough, but because of the way the turnouts were arranged, the loops got progressively shorter until the last two were just enough for a pannier and B-set, with even a three-car DMU being too long. Worse than that though, when I looked at the amount of room on the boards not taken up by track, I couldn't help feeling that the existing set of loops weren't a very efficient use of space. The solution was to go double-track, breaking the loops into three up and three down tracks, meaning that - ultimately - they can all be long and make much better use of the available area. I thought long and hard about doing it, though, because I was quite satisfied with the scenery and reliability of the layout as it was, and I didn't want to undo a lot of good work. In the end, though, I got the itch to start doubling! The plan was to do the work in two phases, completing work on the spring module (including re-ballasting and attending to scenery) before doubling the winter module. The first job, to be able to work efficiently, was to dismantle the existing lighting rig and valence, so - since it hasn't been put back together yet - these shots are taken with just the normal room lighting. So here's where we are: Track is now doubled through the spring module, and the new alignment is a lot gentler on the reverse curves than the old one. It was actually a case of lifting and relaying all the track, as well as altering the angle and width of the crossing over the brook. By working carefully, I managed not to damage any of the foreground scenery, including the telegraph poles - but more on that later. The new brook crossing uses some of the old Wills parts but (for speed) I decided to use the exciting new Superquick papers! Since I'd seemingly acquired a huge number of stone sheets from Beatties(!) this was the spur to tackle the occupation bridge at the end of the layout, as featured here: Before, the single track just ducked out of the module through an exit concealed by trees, but being double now, the hole needed better concealment. Here's how the occupation bridge looks in-situ, providing a nice means of access for the field in the corner. Following a suggestion by Job, I've used charcoals to add a little grime to the bridge and its adjoining retaining walls, but there's still more to be done. Things were going well at that point, but then I managed to drop a tiny blob of Copydex on the telegraph lines. Disaster! It gummed them together in nanoseconds and no amount of delicate persuasion has managed to get them de-gummed. Never mind, they'll just have to be done again, at least between two of the poles. In the meantime, I'm attempting to see what can be salvaged of the original backscene, which I'd also come to dislike in various places. Lessons learned? With the old track, there were areas where it annoyed me that the C+L wasn't as flat as it could have been, with various dips and bumps. I vowed to do a better job this time, but all I've discovered is that it's bloody hard laying flat C+L! Being so naturally flexible, it's probably superb on a rigid baseboard surface, but as soon as you have some inherent give in the system - such as when using any kind of soft underlay - it's all too easy to end up with exactly the same dips and bumps you were trying hard to avoid! At least I've tried to minimise them this time. In this regard, Peco's promised bullhead track would have been easier to work with, I suspect. Anyway, ballasting's next...what larks! Cheers and thanks for reading.

A real bit of old-school railway modelling here - just an afternoon's work with some card, glue, sharp knives and Superquick stone paper: It's a freelance bridge, but inspired by a number of photos of arched occupation bridges in which the road rises to a hump in the middle. It's meant to conceal an exit on a reworked portion of the Spring module - but more on that later. The bridge allows access across farmland which has been traversed by the railway, so it need only be wide enough for a tractor or perhaps a herd of sheep. Whatever the pros and cons of printed sheets are, you can construct a simple model in quite a short time compared to other methods. At the very least, you don't have to paint it afterwards! Personally I enjoy using varied modelling media, and I'm not at all bothered about occasionally juxtaposing one medium with another, provided it's done carefully. The ruined barn in the field which this bridge leads to, for instance, is a Hornby resin product, but once weathered and bedded into its surroundings, it doesn't look out of place. The flash on my camera has picked out some areas which could benefit from a little touching-in with paint, but they're far less obvious in the flesh. Hope you've enjoyed this throwback to a simpler modelling era!