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Saltmarshe Road - an ex SER branchline in Kent


pete_mcfarlane
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1 hour ago, Tony Teague said:

Hi Pete

What's your take on the livery and lettering of that D class?

Tony

I'm red/green colour blind so probably not best person to comment on the colouring. It looks better in reality than it did in some of the photos, but still seems a bit light. The lettering is wrong, I'm going to remove and replace it at some point. I haven't got to the point where I'm happy enough with my attempts at SR lining to have a go at repainting it (although it could go into black). 

 

There's also a nasty join on the bottom of the boiler that doesn't seem to have attracted much attention online, and I had to glue the cab roof back on (the buffers were fine though).  It's a nice model, but could have been a bit better. 

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Yes, the green seems too pale and yellow-ish and despite the lettering being incorrect it is still a nice model overall - but could have been great!

I must have a look at the bottom of the boiler............

Tony

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The windpump took about 6 hours to assemble. The biggest problem was getting it square, as the four sides had to be but jointed, and there's a change in angle two thirds of the way up to make things more awkward. I think there's a slight twist in the top, but it doesn't really show.

 

The instructions start off OK, but seem to peter out towards the end, but the drawing included is OK, and I had a photos of the completed one in my copy of the Vic Smeed book. My main deviation from the instructions was to solder, rather than use superglue. Soldering made things a lot easier, as you can unsolder if you get it wrong.....

 

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The painting guide in the instructions says 'grey or silver' for the metal work, so a blast of grey etch primer will do. I've started painting the sails and the platform.

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  • 3 weeks later...

I've finished painting the Scalelink wind pump, again following the painting instructions that came with it. It also had a bit dry brushed weathering to tone down the blue bits. The next step is to make the concrete base to plant it next to the water tank.  20210817_195026.jpg.95641c814fd2fe0b3bae06614f8f6c6b.jpg20210817_195105.jpg.86aed45177a6675c715cce1369265954.jpg

That was a nice little kit - I'd recommend it to anyone who fancies a bit of slightly fiddly soldering. 

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  • 3 weeks later...

The windpump is now planted near the water tower. I'm not sure a real one would be this close to buildings, but my layout is only 16" wide...

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I've now started on the last building I need, to go in the corner next to the road. It's a clapboarded pub, based on a drawing in the book 'Buildings for model railways' by Maurice H Bradley. The drawing is loosely on 'The White Hart' in Newenden in Kent. Mine is a shell of 40 thou plasticard, plus Slater's brick for the bottom and Evergreen clapboarding. 

 

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I've no idea who Maurice Bradley was (beyond being an Architect) but the book is fantastic, full of drawings and photos of his models on a very nice looking layout - possibly in 3mm scale. I also recall some articles in the RM about the same time as the book, which is dated 1983. It's one of those books I read from the library as a kid, and then tracked down a copy 30 years later via eBay, as you do. 

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  • 1 month later...

Over the last few days I've painted the pub (a can of Tamiya spray white, followed by Valejo Ivory for the wooden clapboarding to give a slightly different finish).

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The windows have been cut and fitted. The were cut from white self adhesive vinyl using my Silhouette cutter - most of them turned out OK, but there are a few (mainly the bay window) where I need to redo them with thinner window bars. Once that's done the black window frames and sills can be added from pre-painted plastic strip. 

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As part of the groundwork for the but I managed to damage the buffer stop at the end of the siding (and the end of the run round needed one to match) so I bought a couple of stops from Lanarkshire models. These are nicely cast, and soldered up in a few minutes. They're now sitting on the radiator drying  ready for painting (on second thoughts, maybe not on the radiator as the temperature of my central heating is not much less than the melting point of the low melt solder).

 

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Edited by pete_mcfarlane
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  • 1 month later...

The buffers are now in place, along with a bit more scenic work. The big hole is for the pub. The smaller holes are for ground signals. 

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Apologies for the mess, the office/layout room is a tip whilst various bits of my house have work done on them. The missing link to getting the layout room sorted were the shutters shutters for the windows have now turned up and been fitted. So once the this board is done I can put it back into position and start sorting the rest of the layout out. 

 

Meanwhile, the pub is nearly complete. The bay window has turned out rather well.

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The windows with their vinyl frames were stuck on from the outside, followed by pre-painted black plastic strip for the outer frames. I then fitted tissue over the windows to look like net curtains, and added the upper floors. 

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And lastly the roof was done, complete with chimneys and Dart castings chimney pots bedded in with black Milliput. 

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The job for this week is to paint to roof/bargeboards/chimneys ready for adding the York Modelmaking roof tiles. 

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  • 3 weeks later...

The pub has progressed slowly. The chimneys are now done, and the rood is painted ready for a the York model making laser cut tiles. I found out the hard way on the cottage that the white plastic base shows through the gaps between the tiles. 

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My plan is to use 2mm scale tiles to represent Kentish peg tiles, which are much smaller than standard tiles. 

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  • 1 month later...

As usual I've made progress and not updated this thread. The pub is now complete. As planned I used the 2mm scale York Model Making tiles to represent Kentish peg tiles. These were pre-coloured (with some tiles highlighted in darker colours) using diluted acrylics.

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I wasn't happy with the results so ended up giving the roof multiple washes of dark grey to darken it, until I was happy with the result. 

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I then installed it on the layout. Sorry about the dodgy photos, as the backscene and lighting rig have yet to be installed. The figures are from Monty's and the pub signs and fences from Scale Model Scenery. 

 

By this stage I've erected the end board on its legs and put in temporarily in place. 

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This allowed me to bring the other end of the layout, and the station board, down from the spare bedroom and tidy them up. As you can see there were a few dodgy bits, caused by working on the thing in situ at quite a high level. These have been sorted. 

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And this is the state of play tonight. The board on the right was put back up tonight (again minus lighting and backscene) which has allowed me to bring the last board down and put it on the workmate ready to be worked on. 

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And yes, the layout room/office is a bit of a mess. getting the layout put back up (having first refurbished and finished as much of it as possible) is part of the plan for sorting it all out. I currently have the 'blur background' option enabled on Zoom to hide all of the mayhem from work meetings.....

 

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I’m definitely looking forward to a pint of suitably flat and irony-tasting beer there.

 

Now, a question that genuinely is a question, and not a criticism: when did benches of that sort start to appear outside country pubs?

 

They’re so common now, and such a model railway staple, but I have a completely unproven suspicion that the average country pub was quite a bit different until possibly the mid/late 70s. Before starting work properly, I used to do a few days here and there for my uncle’s firm, painting pubs in the Kent/Sussex border area, and I don’t remember benches (I’d probably have had to rub them down and treat them with wood preservative if they’d been there!).

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Googling about, it seems that the picnic bench as we now know it was standardised in the USA in the 1920/30s, but I can’t find out when it came here. With the GIs in WW2?

 

Older photos of country pubs seem to show just the odd bench, as in something to sit on, against the front wall, and no picnic tables.

 

This one, a pub I know well, might have some tables outside, it’s a bit hard to make out. It had a lot of passing trade from cyclists at weekends, and I think some of that woodwork is a primitive bike rack, and there are definitely wooden handrails/barriers there still.

 

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This was the last “unimproved” pub I know of, no picnic tables there! http://www.dover-kent.com/2014-project/Queens-Arms-Cowden.html
 

I recall barely any pubs served food, and women on their own were frowned upon in most pubs, and that was in the 1970s. I can say for sure that the Trevor Arms at Glynde had picnic benches in 1978, and I thought they were novel.

 

One final point of evidence regarding tables and benches, then I promise to be quiet: The Rev Awdry's 'Ffarquhar' layout, built in the late-50s, had a very good pub called The Three Beetles. Checking in the December 1959 Railway Modeller, it has a bench outside, with four people sitting, back to the pub wall, enjoyng their beer. no picnic tables. 

 

 

Edited by Nearholmer
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My answer on the bench question is 'I'm not sure', so I went with the modern type as a placeholder in lieu of anything else. Ultimately they are stuck down with PVA and removable if I get more information on what should be there.  

 

I do remember from 'Landscape with Machines' that there was a culture of chaps motoring to country pubs for drinks (and presumably motoring back after drinks, in the days before it was illegal*). These are the only British beer garden photos I've found so far, which suggests tables and separate benches: https://www.facebook.com/AirboroughHistoricalSociety/photos/1930s-station-hotel-guiseleythis-was-a-tea-garden-behind-the-pub-which-also-had-/1376407869127428/

https://heritagecalling.com/2015/08/28/heritage-pub-quiz-celebrating-great-inter-war-pubs/

 

ScaleLink do some nice etched cast iron garden furniture, which is another possibility. 

 

* I remember reading some of the 'All Creatures great and small books' as a teenager. Rereading one as an adult who has passed his driving test, I was struck by the (perfectly legal at the time) drink driving home from pubs, not to mention the (pre-MoT tests) conditions of the cars they drink drove in.....  

Edited by pete_mcfarlane
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  • 8 months later...

I need to go through this thread and restore the photos (and update on progress) but for now here a shot of the layout reassembled in a (very messy) home office. Lighting still to be sorted, power feeds are temporary, and it needs curtains in front to hide the box files full of magazines underneath. But I'm slowly getting there. 

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Next step is to iron out all of the glitches - a point now doesn't throw properly, a Cobalt motor has developed some weird noises, and the main line now isn't level. But I can run trains again. 

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  • 3 months later...
On 19/08/2015 at 22:35, Nearholmer said:

PS: just remembered Leysdown, signalled by a bean-counter after my own heart,mand very similar to your track layout http://www.s-r-s.org.uk/html/sre/R1852.htm

Apologies if someone has already pointed this out over the intervening years, but the bean-counter at Leysdown was Holman Fred Stephens, who counted beans very carefully indeed because he often ended up paying for them out of his own pocket.  When the SE&CR took over ownership of  the Sheppy Light (they'd always operated it) they spent quite a bit to bring it up closer to their idea of what a country branch should look like, although they never quite got there.

 

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