Sous le viaduc

[nomisd]

Lets begin at the beginning. Like many people on here, I always wanted a train set when I was a kid. I got one (I believe it was an Airfix freight set with a class 31 – set up on the dining room table but never permanent) but never the fancy big layout I would have liked. I always kept the hankering but never really did anything about it until I got to my 30s. Now I have disposal income, lets do it. My interest in railways has always veered towards the industrial, hardly surprising as my dad used to organise the visits for the Industrial Railway Society in the late 1970s and early 1980s and I went to a lot places your average child doesn’t get taken to – collieries, steel works, all manner of odd factories with railways (the best being Batchelors Foods in Sheffield, where they presented each of the party with a variety box of their products, including the 12 year old me!)  . But I digress (that will probably happen a lot!)

 

When it came to planning my railway, it could only be industrial. I went through dozens of ideas. The one that very nearly came to fruition was a dockside layout a la the Manchester Ship Canal system. Track was purchased and everything. However due to personal life intervening, it all went on the back burner. When I came back to it a few years later, my head had moved on. To get a good representation would have meant making locos, albeit from kits but a brass kit is not the Airfix kits of my childhood. Also by this time I had made a few visits to Europe, mainly to Belgium and the Netherlands, with my dad and a couple of his friends (evidence of this can be seen here and here). I started to look at European models and decided that this was the way forward. So made loads more plans.

 

None of them did anything though. I did try to make a baseboard but failed miserably. Disheartened, it went back to the “too hard basket”. When Walthers released their cement works model, I decided that I would give it another go. I had joined my local MRC in the meantime and had regained a bit of modelling mojo. The club had a fantastic O gauge industrial estate layout that I got involved with, operating it at shows, buying a couple of second hand locos to run on it so it had restored my faith in modelling (the moral of this story is support your local MRC and they will support you).

 

Not wanting to make the same mistakes as previously, I decided that I would get someone to make the boards for me. I found a chap in Sittingbourne in the small ads of the RM who obliged. I became the proud owner of three 4ft x 2ft boards and a 4ft long traverser for a fiddle yard. The idea was build a layout with the cement works as the middle board, a wagon works and loco shed on the other two boards. So many, many European cement wagons were obtained, a couple of locos, various other wagons that took my fancy. What I didn’t really think about in all this was having one board set up in our office to work on was fine but where are you going to set a 16ft long layout in a north London terraced house? So it all stuttered again.

 

Then life went a bit weird. Mrs nomisd rang me at work one day and announced that her boss had asked if she would go to the USA to sort out the office there. We decided that it was too good an offer to pass up so in the summer of 2010, we left for America for three years. The models and the boards spent their time in a friends loft in storage except the middle board, which lived in the shed of hour house in London. This board I had finished. All modelling went on hold. In the third year, we had a long discussion about what we were going to do when we got back. Mrs nomisd wasn’t keen on carrying on with her job and was starting to think about life after work anyway. After going through many options we decided that we would sell our house in London, moved to France, buy a house and turn it into a B&B. So in December 2013 that is exactly what we did. We brought a house in the middle of a village in central Brittany and moved in in April 2014 and started renovating it. We eventually finished late in 2015 and are opening at Easter (and along the way I have learned all sorts of things that I didn’t know I could do). Which eventually brings us on to the reason this is all being written here – my layout……

[nomisd]

When we were looking for a house, one of our requirements was a space that we could use for our hobbies. As well as my proclivities, Mrs nomisd paints, makes jewellery, sews so a space we could use just for us was important. The house we got had an outhouse at 90 degrees to the house along one side of the garden. To say that when we moved in it needed a little TLC is perhaps an understatement!

 

 

 

However, with aid of the builders, a digger, a lot of concrete, time and effort, it became this

 

 

 

I bagsised my side of what we now call the Bunker and finally, actually set up my boards in anger for the first time.

 

 

Sadly four years in storage hadn’t been kind on what I had done so far so I decided to strip the board and go back to the start(again!). But what to do? I had nearly 20 cement wagons and the silos from the original idea were still usable with a bit of titivation. So it would have to involve a cement unloading facility. I still liked the idea of a port but didn’t want to build a quayside.

 

Slowly an idea gelled in my head. I would do a port railway without the port. It was fairly common in Europe for small ports and the associated warehouses and factories to be served by a railway system operated by the port and not the mainline railway company. So was born the Chemin de Fer des Port Bouffe (bouffe is the sound that a Frenchman makes when he gives you a Galic shrug, its normally written bof. However, the Relais [think of a canteen that does a fantastic four course lunch for 12 euros and is frequented by truck drivers, farmers, builders, bank staff and me and Mrs nomisd on occasion] for in our village is called the Petite Bouffe, using it as a very clever pun on the noise when you shrug and the French word for beef).

 

The idea was finally set in concrete when we visited a suburb of St Brieuc (our local Departmental capital) called Legue. In the port area was this

 

 

A viaduct that carries the N12 dual carriageway across a short valley (and is apparently the 113^th longest bridge in France!). This gave me the mise en scene for the entrance/exit point. Its something that I had been bothered about. My initial idea was to put a road on an embankment over the entrance/exit but I didn’t fell right about it. Seeing this made me think “Yeah that’s what I need, a 40 metre high concrete viaduct”!  With the final piece in place, I came up with this as a track plan

 

 

Given the space I have, I do somehow feel I could have got more track down but this “felt” right. The siding on the right hand side is for unloading pipes loads. Don’t ask me what the pipes are for as that has yet to be decide in my head, suffice to say by a company who do stuff with pipes.

 

I have laid and wired the track and am currently ballasting it. This has not been without its moments. One of which is that I didn’t order enough ballast so am currently waiting for more to arrive. Getting the track down and wired was quite a sense of achievement. That was finished last Friday and was followed by a small dance around the bunker and an afternoon of actually playing trains for the first time ever – who cares that there is no scenery to speak of, I have moved wagons around without the finger of god for the first time!

 

Hopefully the ground works will be finished by the weekend at which point I will take some pictures. Thanks for reading this far! 

[Allegheny1600]

Hi there,

Oh my! This is most interesting. That's a great intro and congratulations on setting up in France, I hope that goes well for you.

There are a few RMwebbers who are French based, I used to live there from 1979-83 and odd spells aftwards.

I do like you track plan, it looks a cross between a typical European set-up with a little bit of US influence with that X-ing. Nothing wrong with that, I hasten to add, I've seen plenty of that kind of thing in Europe too - it's whatever is needed to serve the customer.

All the best,

John.

[nomisd]

 it looks a cross between a typical European set-up with a little bit of US influence with that X-ing. Nothing wrong with that, I hasten to add, I've seen plenty of that kind of thing in Europe too

 

Now its funny that you should say that. When I drew it up for the first time, I thought "Thats odd, I have never drawn a plan with a diamond crossing in it ever". I realised that it must have been the subconscious influence of all the copies of Model Railroader that I had read whilst living in the USA. But I too have seen them in Europe - Antwerp docks is full of them, so I could rest easy with it. Also a friend of mine was here at christmas. He suggested having the siding kick back off cement siding. I pointed out that that there would be problems with the length of trains if there were wagons in the cement sidings with that arrangement.

[swisspeat]

Lovely to see a proper railway Den in France! Or any other country for that matter.

 

All the best with your new layout and please keep us updated on your progress.

 

Kind regards,

 

 

Peter

[nomisd]

When I blithely said "Oh, the ground works will be finished by the weekend", what I really should have said is "Stage 1 of the ground works will be finished by the weekend". They are indeed finished as evidenced from the following

 

 

 

The big problem that I have is the temperature. The first thing that I laid was the apron on the right hand side. This (as with the other apron and the roads) are made of Das. This was laid last Sunday and was only dry on Friday. This week has been very cold and the Bunker is unheated (there is a portable gas heater). During the day this is fine, the thermometer has been up to 14 degrees. However, the worst it has been first thing in the morning is 3.8 degrees. The rest of the groundwork is the French equivalent of Polyfilla. Some of it has dried, the rest is getting there.

 

The following are with the buildings in their place

 

 

 

 

 

From left to right they are the storage silos from the Walthers cement works, behind this is a low relief card kit from a German manufacturer whose name escapes me at the moment (this one is temporary as its TT scale and is a bit small, however temporary is an elastic concept!). The next building I knocked up from foam core board, Wills asbestos sheets, Pikestuff roof and stone sheet. The last low relief building is a Pikestuff creation.  

 

Around the shed area, the fuel tank is Ratio and the bothy (I must find out what the French call this...) is Arctitec. The loco shed will be scratch built and hasn't been started yet. The other missing building is the cement control room - this is an Arctitec signal cabin and is currently on the bench. The walls are embossed stone sheet glued on to three layers of laminated cardboard - these are the only two lengths of this I have made so far, a lot still to go...

 

The viaduct piers are the foam core board and will eventually be covered with Das. When I make the top, I think that I will reduce the height by a couple of scale metres as it sits a bit too high at the moment. My plan is to put a MDF roadway on top of this to finish it of.  

 

 

[nomisd]

Stage 2 of Project Ground Works is more or less complete.

 

 

 

 

 

The white has more or less been covered (the long line of white next to the road is where the wall is going). I have used Noch textured paste to do all of the colour. The mud is a weird colour, it certainly reminds me of things other than mud. You can see where it has been watered down to eek it out. I have a jar of Woodlands Earth pigment that I intend to go over the top of this with - I have done it on a small part and it makes it look more like earth than, well...

 

The cement unloading prom Das is still not dry so that is still in it natural state. The unloading aprons are far from flat but this is something that I will live with for a number of reasons - time, skill, lack of patience! Life should be a learning process and the lesson from this go for the easier option next time. One thing that I learned during the house renovation was that there is no such thing as a flat surface or a square corner, life is a bit lumpy. 

 

I have also done the first go at painting the two buildings

 

 

If you are looking at the Pikestaff building thinking that its a familiar colour, you will probably be recognising early BR coach crimson (or you too are an Old Dunsmorian and you recognise the colour of my alma maters blazer) - for some reason I am not entirely sure of, I had a rattle can of it so decided to use it on the building. I decided that the whole scene could become a bit drab (it being industrial) and didn't fancy the normal grey or blue or white for the building so went in a very different direction. I am girding myself to do some sign writing on the green building.

[nomisd]

Suitably girded, I have tackled my sign writing. I have taken this

 

 

and done this to it

 

 

Overall I am happy but know what not to do next time. After deciding that freehand was too hard, I found a suitable font and downloaded it. I printed it out on paper and then stuck it to a piece of card. A very fiddly couple of hours ensued cutting out the letters with a scalpel to create a stencil. My original idea was to go straight onto the green in white but that was a disaster. There was no definition to the letters and it just looked a mess. I then decided to go over the white letters with a block of white. I then got a felt pen and drew the letters in and then filled that in with paint. Its not perfect but I am hoping that with a bit of weathering it will be fine. I don't think that painting on a ridged surface helped much either. I considered adding "les fabricants des machines agricoles" (agricultural machinery manufacturers) between the two lines but couldn't bring myself to make the stencil! Incidentally Lecoent is the name of the last French family to own our house (in fact as far as we can tell they owned the house from when it was built in the 19th century until the last family member died at the turn of the 21st century).

 

In other news - I have one of these

 

 

a Joeuf C61000. It is sold in their equivalent range to the Hornby Railroad (the name of which escapes at the moment). Overall its a perfectly acceptable loco (if a bit like the proverbial off a shovel when running) but a bit on the crude side. However a company called SMD Productions produce a detailing kit for it - this morning mine arrived

 

 

and quite frankly it has terrified me a bit! It will be fine, I am sure. Chapeau to Olddudders for pointing out this combo in a thread about three years ago and without which I wouldn't have gone down this route for a loco.

[nomisd]

I been playing with something that I have never tried before today - weathering powders. Overall I am very happy with what I have achieved with them but as ever have learned some lessons.

 

 

 

[Joseph_Pestell]

C61000 was always an odd choice for Jouef to have modelled when there were much more numerous shunters from other classes such as Y7100/7400 which would have been easier to produce.

 

I'm not sure how era specific your model is but the Roco Y8400 runs very well. Various artisan producers have brought out other French shunters (both SNCF and industrial). Private lines in France also make frequent use of the little German Kof shunters.

[nomisd]

C61000 was always an odd choice for Jouef to have modelled when there were much more numerous shunters from other classes such as Y7100/7400 which would have been easier to produce.

 

I'm not sure how era specific your model is but the Roco Y8400 runs very well. Various artisan producers have brought out other French shunters (both SNCF and industrial). Private lines in France also make frequent use of the little German Kof shunters.

 

I think that you are right - its a bit like a UK producer modelling a class 14. I assume that there was some historical reason for them doing it. 

 

As far as era goes, its loosely mid Era IV. What I would like to get next as far as locos are concerned is one of these 

 

 

Its a Moyse, a loco very commonly found at French industrial sites. A French artisan producer makes one and I am going to try and make that next winters project.

[nomisd]

Rue France Gall* is complete - painted, weathered and glued down. 

 

 

 

On the other side of the road from Lecoent's factory is Le Creperie Jacques, creators and purveyors of the finest galettes and crepes for kilometres.

 

 

The gates and the fences are my first dabble with brass.

 

 

The gates are another SMD Productions kit. It was originally intended as the gates to the loco shed but when it arrived I realised that it was a bit too small. I was originally going to put some plastic wooden fencing here but having a packet of Langley spear fencing I decided to substitute the gates and spear fencing instead. The wooden fencing would have probably been done and dusted in about half an hour - the brass option ended up taking two days but all things considered possibly looks better. In sympathy with the wonkiness of our house, the gates won't necessarily stay closed...

 

 

* - in keeping with the modern way of naming the streets after contributors to French artistic life, the mairie of Port Bouffe decided that Emile Zola and Alexander Dumas were soooo 19th century. Being a child of the 1960s, she decided to rename whole swathes of the streets in the port area after ye-ye singers - the council, however, vetoed her idea to name a street Rue Serge Gainsbourg as he was considered a bit too outre even for the progressive burghers of Port Bouffe.

[Colin_McLeod]

Superb layout and the very high Viaduct is a great idea. Very impressive.

[DIW]

Nomisd, thanks for the link to the France Gall information!

 

 

Only recently I realised that she has won Eurovision in 1965. I bought her 'Babacar' album ( (P) 1987, big seller in French-speaking regions of Europe) in 1992, on that new-fangled CD format (ADD conversion). Her picture on the cover is in the manner of a Kim Wilde style of the time; I had assumed therefore for quite a while that France Gall was contemporaneous with the artists of the 80s-90s. From your link I now know that the music and lyrics were all by her husband, Michel Berger.

[nomisd]

Nomisd, thanks for the link to the France Gall information!

 

 

Only recently I realised that she has won Eurovision in 1965. I bought her 'Babacar' album ( (P) 1987, big seller in French-speaking regions of Europe) in 1992, on that new-fangled CD format (ADD conversion). Her picture on the cover is in the manner of a Kim Wilde style of the time; I had assumed therefore for quite a while that France Gall was contemporaneous with the artists of the 80s-90s. From your link I now know that the music and lyrics were all by her husband, Michel Berger.

 

 

Keeping well off topic - if you like France Gall (or indeed any of the other ye-ye singers) can I heartily recommend Nouvelle Vague. They are two French producers (who I think worked with Air) who decided to take (mainly) British punk and new wave songs and redo them in a Bossa Nova style (can you see what they did there?) sung by female singers in their late teens and early 20s who had never heard the original versions. We saw at them at the Roundhouse a few years ago and it was one of the best gigs I have ever been to.

 

[nomisd]

And bringing us back on topic - after nearly two years I finally managed the other day to take some photos of another location that gave me some inspiration for the layout.

 

Since we have been doing up the house, we have made untold trips to Leroy Merlin (if you have never heard of it, think B&Q but much, much classier) in St Brieuc - sometimes we were going nearly every day. It is on what I suppose would be termed a retail park on what looks to be mostly reclaimed industrial land. Just before you reach it, you have to cross this

 

 

 

 

As you can see, there is a lifted siding into what is now a plant hire depot but obviously wasn't once. In one direction, the line goes to a SNCF triage; in the other direction after a long a circuitous route it ends up at a oil depot at Legue. This is how I found the N12 viaduct as I took Mrs nomisd on a magical mystery tour to find out where the line went to (something she is quite used to by now and no longer bats an eyelid when I shout "stop, turn around and go back" whilst driving along and seeing the merest hint of an industrial loco lurking at a likely looking site!). I am in two minds as to whether the line to the oil terminal is still used, my feeling is that it is not. However on the way to St Brieuc, we drive over the St Brieuc to Loudeac line which is ostensibly out of use but definitely has the occasional train over it as sometime the rust has gone from the rail tops - I would imagine to a grain silo that we also pass and is rail served.    

[Fat Controller]

This sort of line serving a mixture of industrial premises used to be very common in France, with new industrial estates being built with rail connections well into the 1970s. Sometimes, they also served river ports, such as that at Villefranche-sur-Saone. Sadly, most that didn't have a large single customer, such as an oil terminal or agricultural co-operative, have fallen into disuse. One of my favourites was a line that served factories at Etats-Unis, Lyon- it used to cross the Boulevard Periphique (a very busy dual-carriageway) on the level.

[Stubby47]

Doesn't 'Boulevard Periphique' sound much classier than 'Ring Road'...

 

Liking this a lot, Simon.

[Pacific231G]

And bringing us back on topic - after nearly two years I finally managed the other day to take some photos of another location that gave me some inspiration for the layout.

 

Since we have been doing up the house, we have made untold trips to Leroy Merlin (if you have never heard of it, think B&Q but much, much classier) in St Brieuc - sometimes we were going nearly every day. It is on what I suppose would be termed a retail park on what looks to be mostly reclaimed industrial land. Just before you reach it, you have to cross this

 

IMG_2066.jpg

 

IMG_2070.jpg

 

IMG_2065.jpg

 

As you can see, there is a lifted siding into what is now a plant hire depot but obviously wasn't once. In one direction, the line goes to a SNCF triage; in the other direction after a long a circuitous route it ends up at a oil depot at Legue. This is how I found the N12 viaduct as I took Mrs nomisd on a magical mystery tour to find out where the line went to (something she is quite used to by now and no longer bats an eyelid when I shout "stop, turn around and go back" whilst driving along and seeing the merest hint of an industrial loco lurking at a likely looking site!). I am in two minds as to whether the line to the oil terminal is still used, my feeling is that it is not. However on the way to St Brieuc, we drive over the St Brieuc to Loudeac line which is ostensibly out of use but definitely has the occasional train over it as sometime the rust has gone from the rail tops - I would imagine to a grain silo that we also pass and is rail served.    

This looks like it's going to be a very interesting layout Simon.

 

 

So far as I know the line from St. Brieuc to Loudeac is still open for freight and also used by a group called Chemins de Fer du Centre Bretagne who run autorails on it at weekends during the summer. I don't think they run every weekend but when they do, according to their 2015 timetable, they run the full length from St. Brieuc to Loudeac. According to the latest RFF map I have, after Loudeac there is an out of use section as far as St. Gerand and a freight only line from there through Pontivy to Auray.  

St. Brieuc-Loudeac closed to passengers in 2006 when SNCF pulled the same trick they used on the line to St. Valery en Caux some years earlier. The trains were "temporarily" replaced by buses while an autoroute was being built. It was then claimed that people preferred the buses, which had been run more frequently, and the line has never reopened to passengers.

I've sometimes wondered whether SNCF's ambition in life is to replace all French trains except TGVs with buses!!   

[nomisd]

The gardeners have been in and laid a lawn.

 

 

 

Thankfully, it doesn't look like a luxurious bowling green (or as its known in France, gazon Anglais) but it has become a bit patchy which was the intention. I may go over it with the vacuum again.

 

All manner of walls and fences have gone up by the cement terminal. The wall surrounds Rue Sylvie Vartan. 

 

 

 

I have also started detailing the loco and already a lamp iron has been lost to the great modelling gods - a ping, the sound of it hitting the wall and then who knows. There is an option to fit two rather than four to one end of the loco so I have one more that can become an offering.....

 

 

 

[nomisd]

Well that was an experience. I think I have made it look less toy like but have certainly made the loco less easy to handle like a toy - too many delicate bits glued onto it now. Just painting the exhaust in metal makes it less toy like. The cab roof needs painting as I have got rid of a moulding mark.

 

 

SMD don't seem to have updated their kit for the latest version of the model as I had to modify the footsteps to fit, not massively but a chunk of metal needed to be cut out to go round the coupling pocket at both ends. Also none of the number plates match the loco number. I think that all of the five number plates that come with the kit are of previous versions of the model. I opted to crudely paint out the buffer beam numbers in black and to paint the number plate black - I have actually seen this done in real life with ex-mainline locos that have been sold into industry.

 

It now masquerades as C 61027, which in real life entered service on 27/6/1951 and was withdrawn from Lens on 31/12/1981; as far as I can ascertain, it was then cut up. However in the parallel universe....

[nomisd]

I have spent the last week building the eponymous viaduct. Getting this done means that I can complete the back scene around it.

 

 

 

 

It was built from foam core board and then wrapped in Das. This dried much quicker than the aprons as I could bring it upstairs where there is heating. I painted it a concrete colour then scored lines on it to represent segments. It now needs road bed, which in turn needs some barriers. 

[Colin_McLeod]

Nice work. How do you plan to disguise the "hole in the sky" where the trains pass through to the hidden sidings?

[nomisd]

Nice work. How do you plan to disguise the "hole in the sky" where the trains pass through to the hidden sidings?

 

 

For the moment I am not. I was looking at it yesterday thinking that it looks a bit incongruous and trying to come up with a way of covering it up. The only way that I can think of doing it is to use some sort of strips of plastic. I have some heavy duty rubble sacks that could be useful and they are blue. 

[Colin_McLeod]

Perhaps a strategically placed building and/or trees so that the trains disappear behind them (from normal viewpoints) before going into the hole.