Frappington Jct

Hi Will, the layout looks really good! Quick question, are you leaving the grass-free areas on the hills as they are and if so, is it just dark brown poster paint? If not, what are are you using, I need to do similar!

Over the christmas holidays I've been keeping myself busy building various kits to form my new cement works. It's not yet finished, but I'm yet to build up some perimeter walls as I'm too fed up with card kits for the moment! I also need to add some pipe work, as well as a cobbled road surface. All the kits are Metcalfe, with the main bulk being the brewery kit, with a water tower, sandhouse and a modified red brick station waiting shelter to act as a deliveries office. The hopper is from Hornby and will eventually have pipework coming off it, leading to the main works off scene. As mentioned above, most of the buildings are built as intended, but the shelter/office has been modified somewhat. For a start, the inside rear wall has been bought forward so that there's a connection between the two end buildings, and a new door and window have been added. The window involved me trying to create a window frame out of paper to match the supplied windows. It came out abit thick but I don't think it looks to bad. The glazing is just clear plastic. The door was also one supplied and the space where it was meant to be on the kit is represented as bricked up, along with one of the windows which I lost the glazing for. And some pics of the finished (for now) site: My long waited for fish train also started to come together over christmas, as I recieved 4 of Hornbys new fish vans as presents. These, a pair of Bachmann insulated vans and some other miscallaneous vans, along with a K3 currently gorm the train. The non-insulated vans will be phased out as I purchase more Hornby (and Bachmann when they're released) fish vans. But for now, here are some pics of the current train:

Right then. This is my first EVER blog ever, so bear with me... It's basically on my first layout project 'Frappington'. The layout is a continuous run single track line with a passing loop in the centre of the layout in a three platform station in the centre of the layout, all housed in my loft. It's modelled in 'OO' to anything but finescale! It's set on the Eastern Region of BR in the 1950's, to the east of Doncastor on a fictitious line from Doncastor to Grimsby via Epworth. The Epworth connection allows me to keep open the L&Y branch from Hull as far as Epworth, which gives me the excuse to run some midland engines as eastern branchlines aren't the easiest to stock... Theres also a fictious branch line just of scene to Scunthorpe, allowing for steel traffic (when I have the stock) and bigger engines (possibly.) This is also the cause of the dubious junction. The name was originally Frappington Junction, a name which had been taken from a previous layout which never really got past track on base boards and there was no hope of scenery. That layout used the same boards as the current layout, but was double track with a branch line, which made it very cramped and hard to operate. As such it was ripped up and replaced by the current plan which includes a much larger goods yard and a small cement works. That also dictated my profile name, as I still was/am calling it as such until I have to actually decide and make station roundels. Most of the bulidings are kit built, from the usual suppliers. Some of the buildings are ready-to-plant examples, mostly the bigger town buildings (garage, church, firestation) and the cottage and barn on the farm. The ground frame hut and coal staithes are also resin. The only exceptions to this are the yard crane which is a repainted Hornby Thomas model, seperated from it's base and painted grey, and the shed which is scratch built using one wall of a very old shed my Grandad many decades ago. It did manage to survive the hacksawing which it was subjected to though. Photo's are included below. I do apologise for the quality of the photos, the light isn't very good. I've also included a picture the madness that occurs behind the scenes in my four road fiddle yard. After this pic was taken, I cleared some of the stock off the layout as I had no idea where to put the van train, and I like to have all reguarly used stock within easy reach when assembling trains.