Walford Towers

[Signalist]

I will kick this thread off with some pictures of Walford showing some of the details that were included. Many of the pictures were taken during construction so don't necessarily show it all in its finished state.

 

Here is the team to start us off. From the left me Paul Harman, Chris Robertson, Maggie McBride, Team Leader Mark Leigh, Derek Souter and Paul Tyer.

 

 

Here is an overview of the layout looking from the allotment end towards the 'Walford Towers' tower block itself. Walford South station is on the left in an urban cutting, while Walford East is on the right.

 

 

 

 

And here is a shot looking the other way towards the canal and allotments before the final ballasting and titivating was done.

 

Edited October 14, 2018 by Signalist

[Signalist]

A key cameo for us Tracklaying Ninjas who all met when doing the Biggest Little Railway was the canal scene. As well as the quad bike in the canal we had made the canal from a piece of 32mm gauge Biggest Little Railway track. Having Dirty Den floating face down with his faithful poodle Rowley standing by was just incidental...

 

[Signalist]

The 'Walford Towers' tower block was a key feature which we included as a way to get some height in to the layout to meet the height criteria for judging. Although it was intended to be a pre-build in the end due to transport limitations of getting it in hand luggage on an internal flight from Orkney it travelled as a kit and Paul Tyer constructed it on site from his pre-made kit of parts. It is a really nice building because it really gives scale to the layout and is a great way to include something big without taking a lot of ground area. It was built completely to scale from the real Canterbury House in Borehamwood near to the BBC Elstree studios. The bollards were part of our scratch build challenge and were made from the rawlplugs. The tower block helped make a scenic break to hide the short distance between Walford South and Walford East stations.

 

 

Here is the prototype for comparison.

 

Edited October 14, 2018 by Signalist

[Signalist]

Terraces are an important part of an urban environment, and what we called the East Terrace where Dr. Legg had his surgery was no exception. Unfortunately Dr. Legg had his surgery in the basement so these terraces had to be kit bashed in order to add the basements. The East Terrace was a pre-build built by Mark Leigh.

 

[Signalist]

What we called the South Terrace was again a pre-build this time built by Maggie McBride. Again air travel was involved so this was built in her hotel after flying over from her native Ireland. The prototype for these buildings is just some fronts on the edge of the studio set, so we used modellers' license and complete houses were used instead. They back on to the retaining wall parapet for Walford South station which does not look quite so tall when viewed from the front viewing side of the layout.

 

Edited October 14, 2018 by Signalist

[Signalist]

The Viaduct with Walford East station was built by Derek Souter as his pre-build. The arches were populated with the correct businesses as per Eastenders including Mitchel's car repair garage and the E20 club both with animated signs and welding. Additional animation was provided by emergency vehicles with blue lights which must have been anticipating some kind of bus accident...

 

 

The station building at street level was made from a downloadable kit of Walford East station which was printed out and mounted on card while the platform building was Scenecraft. The platform was built during the shoot.

[Signalist]

Much has been mentioned of our track being a bit tight on clearances for the Class 350 stock that we were running. This picture shows the problem area before we realised there was a problem!

 

 

The photo was taken before the 3rd rail had been laid on the middle of the three tracks - the right hand one was in tunnel so we did not bother with conductor rail there and I don't think that the judges noticed! Because this area was on an incline we could not pre-lay the track even though it was on one of the boards that we could have done. I think that Derek and his assistants did a superb job of laying the conductor rail and I don't think that many would consider electrified track in a timed challenge.

[Signalist]

I think that we were lucky with the scratchbuild challenge items that we were given. We managed to use all of the copper pipe - it really is a very versatile item, and I don't think we had much left of the paintbrush. If you need bollards the wall plug department of the DIY store is thoroughly recommended.

 

The Olympic rings, Cenotaph  style memorial, and Henry Wood sculpture made a very nice addition to the gardens in Albert Square.

 

 

We had not planned on having a sewer construction site or a sewer siphon over the canal - but when it was sprung on us Chris came up with a really nice construction site around the allotments which had already been placed.

 

 

And including the animated road drill was a nice touch too.

Edited October 14, 2018 by Signalist

[Signalist]

I built what I called the 'Queen Vic Complex' of the Queen Victoria pub and its surrounding buildings for my pre-build. The pub was modified from the Kingsway 'Queen Victoria' pub kit by removing the top story and adding the very convenient water tower from spare parts. The Eastenders set does not have a proper roof on the queen vic so I used the roof detail from the Kingsway kit as is. The pub was built so as to be able to house the animation equipment which allowed a figure to be placed discreetly in the water tank and remotely ejected using a servo via a slide through the front door.

 

The rest of the building complex was scratch built. The adjacent low rise block of flats is not seen very often so not many pictures are available to work from, but I think I captured the feel of it. The two shops in bridge street are not easily seen by viewers, but the the fronts were made by scaling and printing pictures of the shop fronts and layering the components on. If nothing else the garish colouring should be correct!

 

Queen Victoria pub with the internal animator.

 

Queen Victoria pub with the adjacent small block of flats with some lego ninjas photobombing.

 

Pub with Minute Mart and Launderette in Bridge Street.

[Signalist]

Chris Robertson built the Café complex of buildings which includes the café in Bridge Street opposite the launderette and the terraced houses on the corner. The café was scratch built and the terraced houses were from Metcalfe kits suitably 'Londonised' with extended party walls and velux windows added to match the buildings on set. There have been three Eastenders sets and the velux windows represent the house as it appeared in the second incarnation before the set was rebuilt for HD. Let no one say that we did not research this very thoroughly!

 

 

Edited October 21, 2018 by Signalist

[Signalist]

Here is the plan we used. The track was laid out in CAD which is how I knew that we could put a medium radius point in to the transition curve to avoid it looking too 'train set' and the 3D render from the CAD was really good in giving a feel for what the final layout would look like.

 

 

 

 

We also produced a 3D model of the tower block and used Microsoft Project to produce a Gantt chart so that we all knew (especially Mark) what everyone should be doing at any point. Tasks were arranged with dependencies so that we knew which tasks needed to be completed before other tasks could be done, and we arranged for drying times to coincide with overnight.

 

 

[RJS1977]

It might, with hindsight, have been useful to lay in a crossover connecting the two ovals. Not for any particular operational purpose, but as an aid in ensuring the two ovals were the correct distance apart.

[Signalist]

To look right in the space and be meaningful operationally the crossovers would have had to go on the curves at the left hand side, and that would have meant hand built track to match the radius. Given the brief they would have not been used as crossovers for the programme so we did not bother.

[sb67]

Thanks for posting that signalist, good to see more of your layout. The tower block looks superb, show's how big these things are when scaled down! appologies if I've missed it anywhere but what will happen to the layout now?

Steve.

[Mark8023]

Here is the plan we used. The track was laid out in CAD which is how I knew that we could put a medium radius point in to the transition curve to avoid it looking too 'train set' and the 3D render from the CAD was really good in giving a feel for what the final layout would look like.

 

Walford Map v3.jpg

 

 

Walford 3D - 4.jpg

 

We also produced a 3D model of the tower block and used Microsoft Project to produce a Gantt chart so that we all knew (especially Mark) what everyone should be doing at any point. Tasks were arranged with dependencies so that we knew which tasks needed to be completed before other tasks could be done, and we arranged for drying times to coincide with overnight.

I think another interesting point was the use of the wiki to develop ideas, flesh-out the details and provide a “one stop shop” for information. Production of the detailed Gannt chart helped during the build a lot.

[Mark8023]

Much has been mentioned of our track being a bit tight on clearances for the Class 350 stock that we were running. This picture shows the problem area before we realised there was a problem!

 

657D5E8F-B145-4C27-A359-6717DB0FD29B.jpeg

 

The photo was taken before the 3rd rail had been laid on the middle of the three tracks - the right hand one was in tunnel so we did not bother with conductor rail there and I don't think that the judges noticed! Because this area was on an incline we could not pre-lay the track even though it was on one of the boards that we could have done. I think that Derek and his assistants did a superb job of laying the conductor rail and I don't think that many would consider electrified track in a timed challenge.

I think the biggest surprise on clearances was in the tunnel where we had to quickly create more space. The use of balsa made this easy and reminded me at least what a great material that is. Cutting holes in the model if we had used styrene would have been more problematic and lead to collateral damage .

 

The other major clearance issue was in relation to the third/fourth rail, and the stock pick-up shoes. Difficult to get this right with the stock in Essex, and the track laying in Elgin!

[hmrspaul]

As a team you clearly come from  far corners of the British Islands. Could you explain the origin of the team please.

 

Paul

[Signalist]

We all met up when doing the Channel four programme 'Biggest Little Railway". Apart from Derek we were all in track laying Team 'D', Derek was in the special builds team. We all got on so well being very resourceful doing a time critical job that we knew we would make a good team. Mark did a stint as leader of Team 'D' so was the natural choice for team leader. We did all end up coming from the nine corners of the universe though - Me in England, Chris in Wales, Maggie in Ireland and the other half of the team liberally spread over Scotland.

 

Heat 2 was a bit of a grudge match with much of Team Sci-Fi also being involved with Biggest Little Railway too!

[Signalist]

There is an article on page 50 of the latest MERG journal (vol 52 No4) I wrote about the electronics used on Walford Towers. 

[Ian Morgan]

In fact, 19 full pages of the Merg journal are taken up describing the electrics and electronics used on several layouts built for the Challenge, including descriptions of some extra, behind the scenes, activities. Submissions from 6 authors/members/competitors from different teams.