Booking Hall

Thanks for those observations Schooner. I'm still undecided, but I'm pushing on with the large fishing boat anyway. I think it might look good placed as though it has just slipped its moorings.

A couple of days working on the fishing boat have resulted in a basic hull, but I didn't realise that it was almost the same size as the puffer, and I'm beginning to think it might be too large and will overcrowd the limited space available. I've sketched out the plan of the Scalescenes small fishing boat, which might be a better visual balance in the dock area. Any thoughts please?

Today the mooring bollards and anchor have been added and weathered, the prints made for the Scalescenes fishing boat and a start made on cutting out the parts. I think I explained this earlier on in this thread, but the bollards are home-made from brass bar turned to shape on my lathe and glued to a square of thick card. Tiny sections of plastic rod represent the holding down bolts.

The appallingly wet weather meant that I stayed indoors today, which at least saw the concrete weathering completed. It doesn't show up much on the overhead view.

Hi Steve, having not been on RMweb for such a long time, it was quite a shock to see that most of the pictures had disappeared. I know how annoying it is to look at another thread and see only icons where there should be a photo, so it is perhaps something I ought to make good in my own contributions! Thank you for your kind words and encouragement. Although I haven't been doing much personal modelling, I have been working on the club layout for the last year, now that we are able to meet again.

Well, it's been nearly a year since I last posted anything about Broad Haven, simply because there's been no progress with it at all. But I thought it was time to blow the dust off and finish it, and the possibility of a last minute request to show it at our annual exhibition in November had everything to do with it!! So, I took a long, hard look at what needed to be done, made a mental list, and started by weathering the edges of each concrete panel in the hardstanding. So far I've done about 50%. After that's done, I'll get the airbrush out and weather around and between the railway tracks with an oily/ashy/rusty sort of colour.

You're very kind, thank you!.

A little late on the response, but that's amazing. Thank you very much!!

A little bit more landscaping has been done around the oil siding and loco siding. This is mostly sieved Chinchilla dust splodged with a runny mix of brown and black acrylic paint. The ash piles are just that - real coal fire ash! Some short fibre static grass is patchily scattered around to blend out the junction between the ballast/ash/bare earth and the concrete.

Hi Paul, thanks for asking after me. All fine here. I hope that you're now fully recovered after your brush with COVID. I'm afraid I've been slacking as far as railway modelling is concerned, so not much to show, but I did more or less complete the Oil Depot. It still needs a few more details and then I can move on to another area to finish. I may be asked to exhibit it at a local show in November (if it goes ahead) so if the call comes through that might provide the impetus to actually finish it!

Equally as curious is the question of how holidaymakers reached the 'camping apartments' on branches from which the passenger services had been withdrawn. Scan is from the BR 1960 Scotland Holiday Guide.

It's been a while since I did anything to the layout, but the fine warm weather we had tempted me elsewhere, however it's raining again now so time to resume building! The next stage is to complete the oil terminal so the tank had to be detailed before it can be fixed down, then the oil pipelines and hoses can be added. The tank itself has been made for some time (from a baked bean tin covered with the silver foil I stripped from the insulation which formed the baseboard for the layout, scribed to simulate the panels forming the tank). What was missing was handrails, delivery and discharge pipe and valve, a manhole, vent and access ladder. I'm not that well versed in the bits and bobs associated with these type of tank, but those seemed to me to be a minimum requirement and frankly, there isn't really room for much more! The ladder and handrails are Scale Model Scenery laser cut items. The pipework is brazing rod and the manhole is a bit of tube with a circle of card for the top. The bolts are tiny squares of 0.030x0.030 plasticard microstrip, all are painted with a mix of aluminium paint and terracotta. Hopefully weathering will reduce the shine a little to match the rest of the tank.

Thanks Steve. I hadn't heard of the dodge of using Cl. 31 wheels. You'll have to let me know how you get on, although I do have an Airfix class 31 so I could just see if they fit. Anyway, your comment made me get back into my model railway room and 'do a bit', so thanks!

Note for anyone also making one this way, make sure you have sufficient length between the pivot and counterweight, or else make that part of the arm cranked upwards, otherwise it won't go adequately vertical before the weight hits the support uprights - like mine!!

Not much done this weekend, just a manual lifting barrier to restrict access to the oil depot area. Made from a piece of welding rod with a piece of brass turned to fit as the counterweight, plastic 'I' section for the uprights and a bit of wire soldered on as the pivot arm.

Glad you found the thread interesting John, and yes, that's my era too!

Hi Steve, I should really have added the comment that I didn't get mine from B&Q after all, as the corrugations on the ones they had were too far apart and coarse. I eventually tracked a suitable one down at my local Ironmongers. Sorry for sending you on a wild goose chase!

Thanks Steve. It isn't my original idea, but it works very well if you can find some threshold strip with the right pitch of corrugations. I described the process in a bit more detail in this post from my 'Far Wittering' thread. For the light railway look I'm aiming for, I fancied having a small corrugated iron building as the station, located at the station yard entrance rather than on the platform. This follows the original designers intentions also. One of my all-time favourite films is 'Oh, Mr Porter!', which was filmed at Cliddesden on the Basingstoke to Alton line, and I found that a card model design download for this actual building was available from http://www.amodelrailway.co.uk/shop/index.html for a very modest sum, so one was duly acquired. Having started it I'm not too happy with the way the corrugations are modelled, so I've decided to use the design as a template and clad it with scale corrugated sheets. The plastic offerings from the trade are too thick so I'm having a go at making my own by using a door threshold strip as a former, rubbing some foil from a takeaway container with a finely pointed stick. The corrugations are just 1mm apart, which is exactly to scale. I have to say though, crouched on the floor in a doorway is not the most comfortable way of modelling, so tomorrow I'm off to B&Q to buy a new strip I can fix to the bench!

On reflection, it seemed a daft idea to strip off the rubber insulation and then reinstall it on some more wire. Why not just use the old cable 'as is', so that's what I did. It was flexible enough to allow me to bend it to shape, but firm enough to stay in the shape required. I made some pipe stools for it to sit on and installed it at the foot of the cliff. It isn't quite finished yet but I need to get the fuel tank that serves the power house installed and piped up first, so a fuel line can run alongside the steam lines over the pipe bridge. This tank also needs a small pump house so I knocked one up from some card and home-made corrugated iron sheet (foil takeaway contained embossed on a door threshold strip). I decided to use a Ratio oil tank picked up secondhand instead of the Wordsworth oil tank as it is a bit smaller. The finished ground surface in this area of the layout is finely sieved Chinchilla dust painted with washes of brown/black emulsion, and whilst the PVA glue was still soft I ran a road vehicle over it to create some tyre tracks.

Reading up on the history of the prototype of the Airfix class B tank wagons, and on tank farms in general, I learned that both tankers and tanks were fitted with steam heating coils to improve the flow of the more viscous 'heavy' oils carried and stored. Unfortunately, that made me want to incorporate steam pipelines on my model, and the obvious source of such supplies is the boiler/power house at the back of the transit shed. So, I've set myself the challenge of installing said pipework and this means crossing the track at some point. I've chosen to do this at the shortest crossing point and started by building a pipe bridge. Pipelines of this nature are of course insulated to ensure that steam and not just hot water actually arrives at the point where it is wanted!, so after an unsuccessful attempt to replicate this feature using 3.2mm welding rod (too stiff to bend readily) I decided to use aluminium wire and some rubber insulation stripped from old electrical cable. This too may prove too awkward to fiddle into the shapes and locations needed, so I may end up just using the insulation sleeving on its own.

Pump House now finished, an enjoyable little project. I expect that the prototype would probably have asbestos cement walls, or perhaps Masonite (treated hardboard), sitting on a brick plinth to raise it off the ground, and be painted. The roof would probably be zinc and the window a steel framed type. The variety and subtlety of building types and styles fascinates me.

You must be planning an ocean!

Jumping about a bit, I wanted to try and resolve the arrangement for the large oil storage tank and its associated infrastructure, so, after a bit of thought I've started making a small building to house the pumps and valves to control the direction of flow. Pipework going into this building will be added with track-side connections and the tank itself will be re-positioned slightly nearer to the bridge to allow more room for the building and vehicles etc. I re-read this article from the March 1964 Railway Modeller to give me ideas.

Cheers Steve.