Booking Hall

Nice!, that's on my 'to do' list too.

I was happy enough with the idea for the 'town' element of the layout to make a start on the workshop building, which I decided should be in the Art Deco style, so after drawing out the base plan and adjusting the angles slightly I cut the shell out of card. I happened to have a sheet of suitable windows I had drawn and printed for a building on the extension to Brierley Canal Road and so the opening were set out to fit them. I used Scalescenes aged brown brick with stone sills and a lintel string course from the same range, with their painted brickwork for the horizontal detail courses. The doors were pinched from the free workshop download with a personnel door added. The interior backscene was scanned from a magazine and the lathe, pillar drill etc. were knocked up from lumps of balsa, cocktail stick and card. Although buildings like this would often have a flat, asphalt covered roof, as this is a workshop I think a northlight type roof would be appropriate so work has started on that. I anticipate five 'bays' of this with the ridges running parallel to the door elevation. This will give me lots of practice in marking out and cutting interesting angles! I'm planning to build the roof as a separate sub-assembly for convenience.

The Puffer is virtually finished now, apart from some old tyres hanging over the side as fenders and maybe a bit more weathering next time i get the airbrush out - I've just used weathering powders so far. It will need 'bedding in' to the water when it's finally fixed in position, and the cargo securing in the hold, but for the time being I'll leave it removable so it doesn't get damaged. Speaking of cargo, I've made a few crates and tea chests out of balsa wood and card. They don't look great close up but they should be alright as part of the overall scene. I've now returned to what became the bete noir of this layout, the townscene on the cliff. It was at this point my interest waned back in June. I started by cutting a template of paper and sketched on the curve of the road. After playing about with several ideas I thought I would have the road exiting into the backscene (narrowing as it goes to give me a bit more space for buildings on what is a pretty small area) behind a small factory/workshop (1920's style of architecture, with a northlight roof hidden behind a parapet); and the frontages of some houses on the other side of the road. My left over bits of 'town' backscene suggest more urban area and a poster hoarding conveniently fills up some of the dead space between the bridge parapet and the workshop. I will probably use iron paling fencing instead of the walling I've just positioned to get a feel for the scene, and have scrubby grass etc. growing through the base of it. I'll see if I still looks good in a day or two's time.

It's time this layout had a name, and I've been giving it some thought the past few days. I still hanker after one that will fit with the B.C.G.D. initials on my Andrew Barclay 0-4-0 saddle tank, which, although is in the livery of the Burnley Corporation Gas Department and is destined eventually for a gasworks themed layout, looks very much 'at home' on the quayside. So, this afternoon I had a look at the map of the south Wales area and spotted, just around the corner on the Pembrokeshire coast, 'Broad Haven'. Although this seems to be a pleasant, small seaside town it sounds right and seems perfect as it gives a nod towards the inspiration for Paul Lunn's design, 'Milford Haven; and with a bit of creative thinking we get 'BROAD HAVEN CORPORATION GAS AND DOCKS COMPANY' - B.C.G.D. for short! So, at last it has a name - Broad Haven.

At the request of the Dock Manager the crane insurance inspector has visited, and having given it 'a good coat of looking at', and, more importantly, after carrying out a few test lifts, has declared the crane's S.W.L to be 12 tons. Everyone involved in its operation is very pleased with this compromise and a prominent notice has been placed in the cab. Stothert & Pitt (Engineers) of Bath have been asked to make a new sign which will be installed when delivered.

Thanks Paul, hopefully this time I'll complete it.

The last couple of weeks has been spent rigging the Puffer and waiting for some ships fittings (ventilator cowls, anchor, stanchions etc.) to arrive. These are now to hand and so completion is not far off. I'm going to try giving the hull a coat of clear varnish as I don't think it looks right completely matt, but I'll try it on the dock wall side first! As I'd gone as far as I could with the ship for the time being, I completed the crane. I added a few embellishments to the basic kit, such as cables to raise and lower the jib (in theory, not in practice), some lights where they would actually shine on the load, not just on the jib, and a sign reading 'Stothert & Pitt, Engineers, Bath, 20 Ton crane'. A capacity of 20 tons might be a little high for this type of crane, those of a similar design seen at Hull docks in the British Transport Film 'Berth 24' are labelled 10 tons, but I didn't watch that until after I'd fixed the signs in place! As I had the airbrush out to weather the crane, I also put some preliminary weathering on both the power house and goods shed. More painting was done on the enginemen's bothy and a chimney added. This still needs a chimney pot. I'm beginning to enjoy this build again!

I know this isn't a model engineering forum, but just in case anyone was wondering what the hot air engine looked like when completed, here it is. It almost works, but not quite, so after several weeks of tinkering with it, I've put it to one side for the time being.

Hi Paul, thanks for asking and sorry for the slow reply! Nothing much has happened with the layout since June, but I've not been entirely idle. In that time I've had a big rearrangement of my study railway modelling room and made it into a much more congenial space with considerably more room to work (read - de-cluttered!), and I have at last re-started this project. My first task is to complete the Puffer, so I've built the windlass, wheelhouse and cabin, and have started on the masts and rigging. I'm making my own tackle blocks (sheaves?) by turning up parts on my Unimat 1 lathe from BBQ skewers. Plastic rod would be better, but I don't have any the right diameter.

Unfortunately not yet Corbs, in fact, it seems to have relocated completely and has taken up residence in my workshop where it's currently going full steam ahead building a small hot air engine!

I've been informed that the Padiham Unitarian show in November has also been cancelled, so 'Far Wittering' will have to remain 'under wraps' for the foreseeable future.

Interesting you should say that The Johnster. There's a chap at our model railway club says it too, but I've never heard it anywhere else. Wonder what it's origin is?

Thanks everyone for your support and ideas about how the road level area could be developed. I am taking a bit of a break from it at the moment until relocate my modelling mojo, but I'm sure they will help me to make the best of this area. In the meantime, after watching some of Oscar Paisley's YouTube videos on his Triang Railways collection (https://www.youtube.com/user/oscarpaisley/videos), I decided that running some trains might be therapeutic, so I went up into the loft to find my old toy trains from the 1960's, those that started me in this wonderful hobby. I was looking for my Triang Britannia, Flying Scotsman, double-ended diesel and the Transcontinental Pacific, together with the associated coaches and wagons. I found some, but not all of them, including the TP's tender but not the loco! All the coaches and wagons are still missing, but they will be up there somewhere. So a few days have been spent cleaning and overhauling them and repairing damage caused by play and the ravages of time. I have a simple oval of test track pinned to a board in the shed and have spent a few happy hours just 'playing'. Now here's a bit of fun! Unfortunately, the docks and harbour company had a bit of a problem in that a passenger special was due at the docks to meet a ferry sailing, and their loco was declared a failure that very morning. Luckily, the docks were due to handle the shipment of a new diesel destined for Australia that same day, so they just 'appropriated' it to power the special. I just hope that it is 'in gauge' Edit, photo no longer available. Sorry!

I've been experimenting today with some left over pieces of backscenes and an odd building or two to see what might work on the road level. Unfortunately, I'm struggling to find much enthusiasm at the moment to continue with this layout. I just can't seem to focus on any part of it so I'm wondering whether to put it aside for the moment and work on something else instead.

I've done this mod on a number of Setrack points, to try and reduce the tendency for wagon wheelsets to drop into the large gap. I use some 30 or 40thou microstrip, welded to the point plastic with PlasticMagic solvent, then, when fully hard, I run a parallel file which happens to be 55thou thick up the gap following the track direction as closely as possible to create the slight angle at the crossing V. Then I just take off the sharp edge at the top of the shim. Although the reduction in crossing gap is small, it does make a useful difference.

As it's cooler (and raining!) I returned to my railway room today, made some more oil drums and spent the afternoon scratchbuilding a prototype 1930's style road lighting column for the bridge. I was planning to use my ancient Airfix lamps from the platform fittings set, but I could only find one, and I need three for the bridge and maybe a couple of others. I don't want to buy another kit just to get them so I had a go at making something similar. I used some 1.5mm diameter jewellers aluminium wire for the column and a piece of brass tube as the base with a couple of copper rings made from wire soldered around it. A glass bead and suitably-light-shade-shaped craft thingy, both left over from when my daughter used to find such things entertaining before smartphones and i-pads came along, formed the lamp assembly. Not yet painted, but easy enough to make and I think looks OK. The base tube will be buried and glued into the 'ground' up to the first ring.

Work on the layout has slowed considerably during the last week or so as it's been rather warm in the railway room and the sunny weather has tempted me out into the garden more - I even did some gardening, but more importantly, tidied up my workshop so at least there's space to work in there when needed. I've not neglected the layout completely though. Using Wordsworth Model Railways downloads I built a diesel oil storage tank which I hope I can find a suitable space for near to the power plant building, and started some batch production work on 45 gallon oil drums, of which there always seems to be quite a lot of lying around in industrial areas. Of course, on a dockside there might also be a few dozen of them awaiting shipment somewhere. Rather than just roll up the paper print as per Wordsworth's instructions, I found some paper straws that were almost the correct diameter, and pasted the overlays to 12mm lengths cut from them. There is a slight white line where the print doesn't quite meet (next time I print some I might increase the print ratio slightly) but careful arrangement will hide this. I did try embossing two raised ribs on the overlay before glueing down, but these just got flattened in the process, so only one attempt was made at that.

The boiler house, or perhaps more plausibly, a diesel generating station to provide power to the docks, or pumping station, is nearly complete. Just needs a few small details adding, and then weathering. Whatever it is, it does a good job as a corner filler and view blocker for the exit to the fiddlestick.

Hi coline33, thanks for commenting. You have voiced what I was actually thinking, but I like it too so I'll 'invent' a bit of history to justify its presence! I hope your visit to the seaside isn't too much longer in coming. I have a bag of black sand which a Canadian friend brought back from a holiday to Puerto Rico I think it was. Then she brought it with her when she visited us a few years ago. Goodness knows what Customs control made of it! She gave it to me because I happened to mention I was looking for a material to resemble ash, but I found that this stuff is magnetic, like iron filings, which would not do loco motors any good if a loose bit got in there!

The last few days have been spent making some more buildings - a small hut to go at the rear (a Wills kit with my own corrugated iron roof), the boiler house is taking shape (scratchbuilt using Scalescenes papers and elements 'borrowed' from other kits), and I decided that this docks area was considered sufficiently 'at risk' during WW2 to merit having a type 24 Pillbox placed there, so I scratchbuilt one to the dimensions given on the Pillbox Study Group website http://www.pillbox-study-group.org.uk/types-of-pillbox/type-24-pillbox/ The most fiddly part of all this was working out how to make the glazed lantern light to go on the boilerhouse roof. It still isn't 100% right, but having invested the better part of a day on it, I'll live with it! Painting of the pillbox and hut still to be done.

The roof is finished at last. Made from some very fine ribbed corrugated cardboard which I saved from I know not where, there are 71 separate pieces on here! It's a bit overscale for corrugated iron, but about the right size for corrugated asbestos sheeting. I was going to make scale corrugated sheets in my usual way from foil takeway containers embossed on a ribbed surface, but there was rather a lot to do and I didn't have enough material, so this way was chosen instead. I'll weather it with my airbrush and weathering powders along with the rest of the shed. Still to add are gutters, rainwater pipes and dummy lights.

That's good Steve, at least you'll be able to get on with it today. Good on you for supporting your local model shop too. I have bought a few things from The Locoshed when they've attended local exhibitions, and now I am lucky that 'The Model Train Centre' has opened up in Nelson, just two miles away from me. Thanks for the kind words about my new project, I'm really pleased with the way it's developing, but I do wonder if the toilet roll crisis was caused not by the general public but by panicking would be docks layout modellers No, I shan't be taking any chances, especially so since my wife DOES work in a school, although she's now isolating in the van! Best wishes and looking forward to your progress now. Getting the track layout right is vital to the success of a model, so it is time well spent. Paul

Hi Steve, glad you've found a good solution to your quayside layout plan. I have a spare 2nd hand Setrack LH point if you can't get one.

Progress with my dockside themed micro layout has slowed a bit recently as I ran out of steam. On with the quayside goods shed now. This has been awkward to design and build due to the space it has to fit in the angle of the tracks, resulting in a trapezoidal plan with a corner lopped off (does that make it pentagonal?), requiring the need to dredge up some long-forgotten maths to calculate the slope of the rear wall to maintain the correct roof plane. The door openings have been worked around the sliding and roller shutter doors from the Scalescenes low relief warehouse free download.

With the virus control situation improving, I've moved out of the caravan back to home, to be reunited with my full array of model making equipment. After a couple of days of readjustment, I had another go at the goods shed, reducing it in height by 15mm. I decided to retain the sliding doors on the side facing the crane, with the rail entry door having a roller shutter in the raised position, but I ditched the central opening and raised unloading area. The scale now feels more appropriate, and I will build a separate building to go at the rear, possibly a small boiler house with a modest steel chimney, to mask the track exit at the rear of the baseboard. I've also given the sea a couple of coats of varnish, with some more to come.