CaseyJ

Further to my last post some pictures of early stages of construction. The first baseboard in my garage. The joint between baseboards showing the end of the platform and the rail ends. Rails are soldered to brass pins and sleepers glued in afterwards. A picture showing the platform and some of the track. The platform is a piece of timber planed to size and the front covered with brick paper. I cut a very slight rebate on the top front edge and inlaid brick paper so that it lies flush with a layer of 1200 grade wet and dry paper to represent the tarmac surface. The bricks are a little too red for my liking so I will eventually tone them down with a wash of diluted Indian ink.

Adrian, thanks for the pictures and references. I have seen one of the pictures of the Crown and I'm aiming to pose a pony and trap on the road outside on my layout. I set off building part off the station in the 2011 diorama challenge to refresh my modelling skills in OO. I have been modelling American N gauge for nearly 20 years. I have built card mock ups of most of the buildings mainly to get an idea of the space and scale area required but I have been forced into 9 feet by about 23 inches excluding the fiddle yard by the household authorities. I have got all the features of the track layout except I put a kink around the position of the water tower to ensure I could fit the back siding. Like you I view from the goods yard side. I have also used electrical switches for my point operating system, positioned at the front of the board in line with the points they are linked with 2mm dia aircraft control rods, fed through electric terminal blocks for support and linked to the point with fine rod. I use the DPDT switch to change the frog polarity on my electrofrog points. I use some insulfrog points but wired specially for DCC use and apart from one locomotive that shorts on the Y point occasionally I have no problems with stalling at low speed. On the subject of track I am using Peco Code 100 because it is what I was given 3 years ago with a Hornby Schools class. I know the track isn’t “Finescale” but I will have to live with it. I have been made redundant since starting this layout and I now seem to be too old to get a job but I am too young to retire so I am penny pinching anywhere that I can in my construction. To this end I will be using card for a lot of my buildings. The granary is being constructed with brick paper that I have printed myself and mounted on layers of cereal packet. I started the water tower with a Dapol/Airfix kit, cutting it down to size and shape and making girders from Plastruct. I will add some pictures when I can get my camera to function in the macro mode . I am using the signal box that I made as an experiment for the diorama challenge but I will be rebuilding some of it particularly the steps. You can see it on the 2011 challenge pages: A Twig off a Southern Branch. I also built a working model of the Prescott Railmobile for the challenge. More to follow when I can get my pictures downloaded. Having trouble posting them on here. Regards Andrew

Hi, This is my first visit to your layout pages and first time on this forum for a while. I am really impressed with your model but it has given me a bit of a shock. I am building a model of Westerham as well, although mine is set in the 1930s. I lived in Knockholt as a child and have some vague memories of the station just as it was being closed. I started my research back in 2011 and entered the diorama competition with a small section with the signal box. I have continued the research and built my baseboards and laid some of the track but space for the layout has been a problem. I have just moved house and now have a room solely for my railway use so I am now making some progress. I am particularly interested in your depiction of the Crown and the other surrounding buildings. I have been unable to find many decent pictures apart from the David Gould book and a couple of others and they show very little of the area. I have less space to show the Crown and the school so they are being shown on the backscene. I took some real pictures of the old school and altered them on my computer and printed a piece to put on the backscene. I have been desperately searching for pictures of the Crown and got one showing it in the 1930s before it was painted. I hope to model it in low relief but will only have about 10mm of space to fit it in. I am currently working on the granary that you have built extremely well. I haven't a clue as to what the non railway side looked like. Is yours from memory or pictures? I will try to get some pictures of my layout efforts and some details of the locomotives I am building / converting to suit the 1930s timetable. Green with admiration Andrew in East Yorkshire

Thanks for that Andy. With luck I'll post my final pictures tomorrow evening but a seperate area seems a good idea having seen the length of some of the entries.

This may sound a daft question but do we need to email our details for our entries or is the forum thread sufficient. I have had major problems with my ISP and I haven't been able to upload some of my pictures after several attempts. I don't believe it is the RMWeb site that has been the issue but a fault with my ISP.