Melyn

In a very minor update I've decided to rename the small town, and the station that serves it Ponsmelyn, this is Yellow Bridge in Cornish. Because there's bridges, I like yellow, and it sounds good. Good thing I haven't printed any signs yet! I shall have to snap some pictures of the latest rearranging of trackplans, roads, and townscene.

Forgot to mention that before embarking on the station I built the Scalescenes freebie shed. This was my first go at one of their kits, and my first go at putting lighting in a building. Just an LED cut off from old Christmas lights, rigged to a rather crude testing battery set up!

Spent a few evenings building a Scalescenes small modern station building. This will go on my back platform, the idea being that after the branch closed passenger numbers dropped and the original station building fell into disuse, but since the heritage railway reopened the branch and took over the original building, passenger numbers picked up again leading to a new building being constructed. I chose the kit as it reminded me of the building at Bodmin Parkway. The roof is waiting until I finish my interior details, find dome figures to put inside, and sort out lighting. I made a few small changes, and added some details like the relocated ticket machine, paperwork left on the side and the computer and office chair built from card offcuts. I also added the grey window frame option to the inside so that you don't just see the back of the sticky label when you peer through the windows. I also discovered my old Wills(?) bike shed (which needs some repair work!) perfectly fits the gap between the windows on one end.

Meanwhile I've been dabbling in some miniature graphic design; creating logos, posters, and signs for the heritage line - the Melyn Bay Railway The plan is to make a poster board outside the station with a metal panel, so I can attach the posters to pieces of magnetic tape and change them around from time to time, as though the railway is running different events. I might do a few more, it's quite fun, I'll definitely add some more BR posters of Cornish locations both real and fictional. The Porthmelyn poster advertises the town at the end of the branch (though I haven't decided if the MBR has made it all the way down the old branch yet or not - I'm certainly not modelling that far!) and uses a painting my mother did some years ago of St Ives harbour. And yes I have a scale version of the Moggy on the poster ready to attend the Transport Festival! (It may in fact live at the railway)

Little progress on the layout itself but I've spent some time improving my workspace. Better lighting replacing a not very bright battery lamp with some poundland USB LED strip plugged into a spare phone charger; storage for Dremel and glue gun; and neater electrics - no more tripping over extension leads trailing across the floor.

Tonight I have weathered a shipping container. The other one will get a similar treatment as well, but for now it's there for the before & after effect. The plan is, at the edge of the heritage railway car park to create a version of this scene from the edge of the Helston Railway car park and to that end I have acquired kits for a Portakabin and small saddle tank loco which will be sat in bits, like in the Helston photo.

Progress remains slow, but I've made my first ever tree. Foliage courtesy of The Range's flower arranging section, trunk and branches courtesy of the Forest of Dean.

No massive developments - I put some shelves up above the layout but that's not very interesting - except for getting some filler to fill the baseboard join and pave an entrance road into the heritage railway car park (right) and yard (left). I think my tarmac may be a little too dark though (the paint's wet in the photo and has dried darker). Meanwhile the garage has acquired an ex-AA recovery truck and had it repainted in their blue livery. Still got a few details to do, picking out the bumper and lights with paint and removing the AA logos from the box below the light.

This view of the station board is more like the final plan, but I have since updated the points. The car park is a remnant of the old layout, and the intention is to retain it.

Well, I've lost track of the chronology, but here's a few photos taken while playing about with track to see if the plan in my head fits - and, with some tweaking, it does! Here's the station/yard board: The plan is buildings where the folded piece of paper is, the low relief shops replaced by a row of cottages and something where the corner shop and Wills garage are (allotments, perhaps). I have, in fact, made a couple more slight changes to the track layout since taking these photos, the arrangement of the loop has been tweaked and a proper junction between branch and mainline added. I'll have to find, or take, newer photos! And here's a view of the village board: this will have a pair of bridges instead of piles of books etc!

I need to dig out the progress photos but after the petrol station the next thing was getting baseboards sorted. Took the jigsaw to the old boards I had stashed behind a wardrobe, cut them to create a 4'x2' and a 5'x'2 (well, a 4x'2' with 1'x2' attached) for the main "L", put up on a simple but sturdy arrangement of legs and bracing, plus funny shaped narrower boards for the bit along the shelf. I also built more garage. a bit more of that, here

just another picture, now in situ on the (very work in progress) layout

Thanks! I intend to, progress has stalled for a bit but in the meantime I'm doing posts catching up to the point I'm currently at. There's more garage and some baseboard bodging to come.

So, where do you start with a layout? Track plan? Baseboards? How about a petrol station? Yes, as mentioned, vintage garages were my inspiration back into modelling and I began by building a petrol station, taking inspiration from the one at Trewellard near St. Just in fact the sign is a near-direct copy. This was designed in kit form using Photoshop, printed onto A4 sticky label, stuck to mountboard, cut out and assembled. Here's a collage of some of the photos I took while making it.

Go on, then. How did you do it!? By the way, I think this is the first I've commented on this topic but I've been following it for a while, really impressive modelling!