SVS

That is awesome - does is scale up to 4mm?

Is that a LCDR Sondes I spy? Any plans for making that available in the future? Is the chassis from a commercial RTR or scratchbuilt?

Good looking wagon to me! What did you use for the ridge of the wagon roof? I'm guessing it would be some sort of felt in reality, very hard to scale right, but looks spot on to me!

Your scratchbuilt wagons are fantastic and of so many obscure and different diagrams as well, it is great to follow! It looks like your wagon sides are one piece rather than individual planks? What tool do you scribe the surface with in order to get a wide enough recess between the planks? Cheers

Even a casual study of any postcards or photographs of Ludgate Circus shows that it was (and still is) a main thoroughfare from East to West London with lots of omnibus traffic traveling up and down Ludgate Hill. Again I turned to Langley Models as they seem to be the only manufacturer producing the horse drawn variety that were so common in London. The first picture was when I originally reached an end stage. Lacking any transfers or confidence to free hand the sides I produced the sides of the body of each bus on word and printed them off to the right size. I glued them onto the sides and then tried to match the paint to the printed ink colour. The result is pleasing to the eye at normal viewing distance. I based the designs off of real life examples at the London Transport Museum and a model, I think the Science Museum? I also used black and white photos of omnibus in the city area to give myself a 90% reliable solution for Omnibus services and names around Ludgate Circus. The advertising was from a selection of enamel signs and posters in N and OO gauge. Unfortunately, when they arrived none were the correct dimensions to cover the boards along the top in a single advertisement, which was prototypical. The solution that I resorted to below grated on me, as did the rather bright yellow of the undercarriage, as I left them on the side to work on other projects. Eventually it became too much and I revisited them, removing the posters along the top and taking the plunge to freehand some designs on the side. Again I reasoned from an average viewing distance they would pass muster. By this point I also had a bit more experience and confidence with an air brush and decided to "dust" the undercarriage to dull down the bright yellow. The figures are again Stadden's fantastic sculpts. As I prefer relaxed poses the horses are modelled standing still and this example will travelling East to West dropping passengers off, which is why one gent has left his conversation at the front of the bus and stood up to descend the steps at the back. I kept the langley driver, but did a headswap with a Stadden figure. As I didn't have drill bit small enough for brass wire connection, I resorted to using green stuff modelling putty as a means of cementing the head in place, which gave me a rather bulky neck. The solution was to paint our driver with a scarf. As he is constantly exposed to the elements, I figured it was a reasonable bit of modelling. The driver is either a West Ham fan or the grandfather of Pike from Dad's army, depending on your inclination! This bus was missing parts for the top deck, so I made my own top rail with brass wire and the boards along the side are from bits of old tickets, always worth saving them! The figure at the back with hands on hips is the ticket collector. I found in many old photographs that conductors didn't wear a uniform, like railway guards, but many did have smart bowler hats on. Again this bus will be at a standstill outside the King Lud. The ticket collector at the back will be in conversation with a large crowd at the bus stop ready to board for their journey further East into the city. The final part of this project, is to add glazing and to mount each bus on a small base. For the time being this is mainly to protect it, but will lead to eventual mounting onto the baseboard. After this I plan to wire the woodland scenics plug in wall lights into the interior so you can see some of the passengers within and there is a warm dull light emanating from the omnibus interior onto the street, hopefully very atmospheric! As these have, in the large part, been a joy to paint, and as you can seemingly never have enough buses, I may get one more and paint in a different scheme of the London General Omnibus Company. I have also been tempted to add a B type bus from either w^d models or Roden, but this is slightly out my period, as they were introduced in 1910. But we shall see!

Interesting, I only knew about the Wimbledon service. I have seen a photo of the Adams tank at Ludgate Hill on the Disused station webpage. I did also read on the SREMG that T1 tanks were also seen working the services to the city and managed to find a completed kit built model currently in southern livery that I am planning on repainting at some stage so will use that for the time being. But I may add a radial no that I know there were 2 services and for a bit of variety! Cheers

Mikkel, thank you - as I said your pragmatic pre-grouping blog has been a particularly useful source and inspiration behind this layout. Yes, I used several highlights when painting my figures, as well as washes and a technique called glasing. I grew up painting wargaming and miniature figures so transferred the same approach to my railway painting. Yes I was very lucky to get them all together. In that lot I also picked up a 2 wheel and 4 wheel delivery wagon, and painted them up as GW examples that will be from the nearby Smithfield depot when I can produce/acquire some appropriate transfers. The posters on the side are paper printed and scaled down GW posters from the period. Off the top of my head, one was a goods delivery services poster and the other advertising long distance travel to the midlands, the south west and south wales circa summer 1904...someone has obviously neglected to update it and paste a new one over a year later!

Agreed I suspect you are both right and that the West London route was taken. Given it is stipulating LNWR 0-8-0 locomotives as well, that would surely be an indicator that the Widened lines were not used; I'm no expert on the North Western, but I can not think of any 0-8-0 tanks? Only A, B, G and G1 which are all tender locos and wouldn't meet the stringent restrictions imposed by the MET which you mentioned. I am making assumptions here, based on the objections they had with the GNR L1 design. Excellent news though, because it adds a whole new company in the Holborn area that I can model! Thank you for the info

I'm sorry to hear this project has finished, but I can totally empathise with not being able to pursue every idea and the need to sometimes return to your 'main project'. However, this area and subject are of big interest to me and I am very interested in this LNWR train arriving at HV as I've never seen anything like this in my studies of the area. Am I right in thinking from what is written here that this train arrived via widened lines, reversed into HV and then headed back towards LNW via Loughboro Junction, Battersea Bridge and the west london line? If so, does anyone know how it accessed the widened lines? I seem to remember there was possible access to GN (and then down the drain at kings cross) from NLR near Belle Isle, but that seems a very roundabout route and would need access from LNW to NLR from somewhere as well? Anyone have any further details? This thread has already been a goldmine of info so thanks in advance!

Final update today from my start of this blog. The figures by Andrew Stadden have been a big factor behind my choice of subject and time period. The great quality and relaxed poses are exactly what I was looking for and they paint up so well. The 3 men in a boat. They will be in the King Lud sorting a room having rendezvoused after work in the city and ahead of their reunion trip up the thames the next day. The shine will be sorted with a quick coat of matt varnish. This boy has been painted up in a French sailors uniform. In 1904 the British signed the ente ente cordial with France, ending a long period of cold war like relations between the two countries. I figured all things French would be the fashion by 1905. He will be with his family, next to the SECR horse drawn cart, I liked the idea of the contrast between small figure and large shire horses.

At the moment, due to space constraints, it will be a diorama. Quite a few years ago my father was walking past a skip and saw 5 well made baseboards on the top roughly 1x0.56m each. He asked the owner who was doing a clear out if he could re-home them for him and we inherited them. I will use one as the scenic area and "diorama" for the time being, but the others will become the 2 fiddle yards and wings when I get a bit more space. When I find them I will add the drawn sketches and mock ups I had for overall layout. Yes followed that thread closely, very useful for all the operational variations that passed over this small bit of railway!

Not to ignore stock on the layout I have begun to work on Hornby's fantastic H Class. Whilst I have "played with model trains" since I was young, I have never built, modified, weathered or altered any locos, so this was my first attempt. I wanted to get rid of the plastic-y feel I feel a lot of out of the box RTR locos can have. I think I have achieved this to an extent mainly by using some thin coats of gloss varnish to achieve the polished look of the edwardian era locos. I dulled the "highly polished" plastic dome using Vallejo matt varnish and added real coal to the bunker. I also plan on adding some of the photo etched brass numerals from Roxey mouldings and Fox transfers to replace the SECR roundel on the side tank which I removed using the cocktail stick method; as well as some Stadden crew of course! There is a fantastic example of kitbuilt, hand painted SECR H class on Ian Rathbone's website and I have used that as source of inspiration for this part of the project. Room for improvement and a couple of finishes, but for a first effort I'm pretty happy.

In addition to the King Lud Pub I've been working on some of the road vehicles and figures that will make up a lot of the foreground of the layout. As another major interest of mine is miniature figure painting this was an area of layout construction that I particularly enjoy - which is useful because Ludgate Circus was always heavily populated! In 1905 horse drawn vehicles were still very much the order of the day. One of the best sources I have found for inspiration has been the Farthing Layouts Blog which is a great documentation of Edwardian GWR modelling. I particularly like the large GWR cart which was built from a Langley kit. I was fortunate enough to pick up a joblot of Langley models, which included the large water cart. I decided to do a bit of a conversion and try to build a rough estimation of the cart I found this image - http://www.swindonsotherrailway.co.uk/henry.html Handily the image was taken on Fleet Street in 1907, very close to Ludgate Circus and the same time period, so is a great source to work from! The original cart model sits quite high so I lowered the bed of the cart and also built a frame with uprights. The elevated seat was brass rod with some folded cardboard. Underneath you can see how I attached the main uprights and also where I filled in some of the recesses from the original watercart model. The long trough looking object is the bed which the water tank should sit on. On the finished model I plan on covering it up with various load clutter. You can also see quite cruelly the super glue I used to keep the rails in place, a lot of the extra I scraped off or sanded down before painting, or covered at a later stag. And here is the result about 90% finished. When complete on the layout I will have it on the right hand side of the layout, coming to the end of its rounds from Bricklayers Arms and standing making one if its last deliveries. After this it will turn left and head south across Blackfriars Bridge to return back to depot. I plan on having some Andrew Stadden's fantastic workmen figures (another major factor behind my desire to model pre grouping) clambering over the cart in the process of unloading deliveries. Shire horses are Dart Castings and at least one will be modelled with a nose bag on with a handler close by when finished. The signs are hand painted on white primed plasticard and then weathered, from a distance the unevenness is less noticeable and more "authentic".

Having done some research I've decided my "yardstick" for the whole project is the King Lud pub to the left hand side of the scene. It's the only structure in the foreground of the layout that is still standing and is very well documented with plenty of photographs from several angles. Building this gives me the height of the bridge and then the dimensions of building across the road, but most importantly it is my starting point for the layout. As such I have channeled my inner Pete Goss - I've been following his Copper Wort layout closely and have been inspired! Main structure is 2mm grey cardboard with plasticard of various thicknesses overlaid on top - ultimately the aim is to have lit up interiors much like the Kelvinbank Caledonian layout also on this forum.

Long time reader of RMweb, first time poster... Much like my activity on RMweb, I have planned, drawn up and begun many different layouts, but never finished any. I am hoping this will be an end to that, but we shall see! My interest in railways began with the LNER and the ECML, but on one occasion when I was pondering through my well thumbed copy of Geoffrey Hughes book on the subject, I traced the line that ran south from King's Cross towards the city and the GNR goods depot at Farringdon. Knowing I was never going to manage a realistic depiction of Ganwick Curve circa late 30's, it was a natural progression through Geoff Goslin's Steam on the widened lines to discovering the subterranean rail world which saw a unique crossover of many different pre grouping companies, liveries and stock. Travelling a little further south I discovered the iconic view up Ludgate Hill towards St Pauls cathedral. With a background and interest in landscape art, dioramas and film set production, this seemed like an excellent and natural composition for a cameo layout or "moving diorama". The busy junction of Ludgate Circus with lots of vehicles and people moving through it would offer plenty of visual interest without the contrived scenes that I feel some layouts sometimes feature. Add to this the spectacular backdrop of St Pauls and the massive variety and unique operation of stock from lots of different companies it ticked my boxes of interesting, diverse stock and small footprint. Like my choice of location my time period has also changed, and as I read more about the area and operations I decided pre grouping with its rather elegant locos and greater variety was the period for me. The plan then, is to depict the scene below roughly around 1905. This was before passenger operations from Midland and GNR south across the river stopped, LSWR services to Ludgate Hill would still move North across the bridge to run around under Smithfield and former SER and LCDR locos along with the recent Wainwright examples were regularly using both widened and former LCDR lines into Holborn Viaduct. We will see how I get on, my approach is very much I will achieve what I can, when I can and see where I get!