sparks

Lovely curves and rivets

Remains of Halls Road, Crosskeys 2012 Halls Tramroad by Stuart, on Flickr

The evidence suggests that your work ethic is somewhat stronger then mine. Hence why I picked something small! I used to travel from South Wales to West Cumbria regularly and often spent my 'changing' time looking at the Midland side of Castle station. It's amazing how many traces of the catenary are still in place after all this time.

Looking good! The bottom two shots in particular look just like the early photos when everything was new (even without the wires).

I've found that gluing the top member to the front and sliding the whole thing in and out (as discussed further up the thread) works very well to close everything up. See here for some pictures:- http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/73735-riverside/&do=findComment&comment=1090924 Looking forward to some progress pics - your topic was very helpful when I started my APA box so I'm keen to see the finished article!

Port Erin museum, 1991 Left in the dark by Stuart, on Flickr

Some Puffing Billy details Flycrank by Stuart, on Flickr Hold Me Tight by Stuart, on Flickr

Very nice! Lovely atmosphere - which is what it's all about really, isn't it?

Comeng units at Flinders Street, Melbourne. November 2005 Flinders Street by Stuart, on Flickr

Trentham (Victoria, Australia), New Year's Day 2010 Divergence point by Stuart, on Flickr

Thanks guys. Believable is what I'm aiming for! I'm trying to envisage how the location would have developed over time and layer things up accordingly. In such a small space though, balance is the key I think.

While Welsh place names seem to have a paucity of English vowels you need to remember that both w and y are also vowels in Welsh. Having grown up in the Valleys myself (although much further east) I will watch this one with interest!

Progress has been slow recently, partly due to the onset of Spring and Summer, but also because I have been a bit stumped on how to treat the 'other end'. Firstly trying to find/build a suitable building for the back corner and also trying to find a footbridge to act as a scenic break that a] is tall enough to clear the catenary without any fancy wirework and b] has all it's height in the steps (unlike the Airfix and Hornby ones) so that the span itself can be quite short. I made a start on another Osney-inspired stone and corrugated iron building from Wills sheets based on the paper mockup seen below but I'm not happy with it (moral: don't try to build stuff when you're not feeling well). I may finish it and see how it looks or I may just hack another DPM building and be done with it. Good news is that I found a suitable footbridge kit from Jouef (http://www.joueftrains.com/1027%20footbridge.htm) and one arrived from a well known auction site today:- Unfortunately it still doesn't clear the catenary so I will assume that it was raised when the wires were installed and the new platform was built and mount it on some cast concrete blocks. It does look the part though and is just the right size (although I will probably shorten the span by one section) and hopefully work will resume now I have some direction. Sharp eyed readers will have noticed over the last few posts that I have well and truly broken my promise to myself regarding not buying any stock until the layout was finished; a Jouef BB 1-80 has now arrived to take care of the freight shunting. Again, just the right size for the layout and will look the part in both Continental and Australian guises.

I'd also thought of a Holborn Viaduct style Minories, although the disused trainshed walls could be given Cannon St style towers for more interest. It would a good layout for a large room, with a representation of Blackfriars (or Ludgate Hill) and a river bridge before looping around the room to emerge from the Snow Hill tunnel to give a continuous run. You'd need a fiddle yard for reversing and maybe a through station on a viaduct if there was room.

It's in the hardback one with the brown dust jacket - whichever one that is!

I know this has already been said, but this is definitely Hengoed High Level, not Low Level. The underbridge in the foreground carries the NAH line over the Rhymney line below, and the low level platforms on the Rhymney line are cut into the hillside below to the right. The photo faces west towards Nelson & Llancaiach; Hengoed viaduct (or Maesycymmer viaduct if you lived on our side of the valley!) is to the east behind the photographer. The underbridge was missing for many years but was replaced as a footbridge when the viaduct was opened up as a cyclepath - it can be seen in this shot of the low level station (looking south):- http://www.flickr.com/photos/gartcosh37884/7420211628/ As you may have gathered this was my local station when I was growing up. Thanks for posting these!

All good points! Lower would certainly be more practical for running continental or US stock, but it would niggle me that (according to my supposed history) the platforms were rebuilt at electrification, and should therefore be the same height as the stock! But, of course, only I would know and others may not even notice.

Somewhere I have a Rivarossi points & crossing add-on pack that I picked up somewhere along the line. I've never seen any of the trams though!

Ah, Tren y Cwm. That takes me back to my childhood in the valleys! I've always thought that the Valley Lines 143s would have looked good with the red speed whisker and ddraig goch.

The Gospel car - haven't seen that in years! Now that would make a great little project to fill a corner....

.....although looking at drawing F556, which supersedes F339, the platform height is now to be 3'4" - although it may vary from 3'4"" (11.67mm) to 3'9" (13.13mm). So 10.50mm is probably a bit on the low side. Hmmm.

Thanks Martin. I was in Sydney last weekend and noticed a wide variety of platform heights, both in the city and further afield. The Victorian Railways platform height seems to have been 3'2" (see drawing F339 here:- http://www.victorianrailways.net/infastuct/infastructhome.html) which scales to 11.08mm. The Peco edging as is measures 13mm, so sinking the edging into the cork (2.5mm) would give 10.5mm which I think is close enough. Not much progress has been made over the last month or so, but I have progressed the stone workshop this week to a point where it just needs bargeboards, guttering and downpipes. As has become traditional, the Liverpool show also produced some more rolling stock:-

It would appear to be Z1567. See here:- http://forum.e-train.fr/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=59455&start=150#p1261544 and here:- http://forum.e-train.fr/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=59455&start=165#p1262098 Z1572 is also preserved, and appears to be undergoing restoration:- http://z1572.free.fr/2000/20030325/index.htm. Unfortunalely with the end of the 3rd rail in 1993 there's nowhere to run them any more! Edit: It looks like Z1572 moved on in 2008:- http://histoire.trains-en-vadrouille.com/viewtopic.php?p=393332#p393332. Hopefully this was a good thing!

Very nice! I'd much rather wander around a place like this than a modern museum with lots of interactive stuff for the kids but very few actual exhibits! Good to see the Standard emu car under cover (6th pic) - hopefully the other car was there too?

Here's the completed (but unpainted) factory block. I've also made a start on the end building, a stone victorian workshop extended by adding a corrugated iron upper storey. The train-sized doorway is only there to break up the blank wall and will be bricked up. I've not used Wills sheets before and so far I've been pleasantly surprised how easily they cut and go together. This shot also illustrates something else I've been pondering - the platform height. As the Peco sides are 'OO/HO' I assumed that they would be overheight for HO and would need sinking into the cork; but they are the perfect height for the Sydney stock on top of the cork. It could be a quirk of the stock, but this SNCF Z5100 unit on an 'outer' surburban working(!) also looks OK, if too high for the steps. Clearly some research into correct platform height is needed, but I want the layout to be usable with all types of stock so I may end up sinking the platforms anyway.