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Melville Street


lash
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OK so this is Melville Street my next layout after Milton Quay .

 

MQ still has minor finishing work to be done but is currently packed up and about 200 miles away. I think its a great little layout and I have learnt so much from it and Melville Street is aimed at being another opportunity to progress my modelling skills and help me sort out a few priorities . MQ will be finished and played with when I get hold of it again. 

 

These were my objectives for MQ:

 

  • Lightweight and transportable
  • No more than six foot in total and individual boards no more than four feet long
  • Quickish to build ( six months )
  • Simple structures and landscape and not too much of it
  • Simple electrics
  • Southern around 1960
  • An opportunity to run passenger, parcels and goods



 

For Melville Street this what I have in mind :

 

  • Lightweight ,robust ,transportable and easily stored
  • Using commercially made boards and compact but not quite micro
  • Quickish to build ( I wouldn’t be so naive as to put a period on it now)
  • Urban structures and buildings preferably with some height
  • Effective DC electrics to give operating interest
  • Southern early 60s to early 70s
  • Third rail electric short EMUs and parcels with opportunity for goods and shunting in a second phase.

 

Planning has started and I'll be back soon

 

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Been working on the signal box this week and that’s nearly done so far as I can go on lockdown , see the thread in the Get Britain Modelling section , do back to the layout today.

 

Baseboards will be the Scale Model Scenery products and I bought a couple back in the heady days of early March. They for the lightweight robust transportable and easily stored require and seem well conceived and good value. The foamboard baseboards used for Milton Quay were great for that layout and do try them for a small layout but I wanted to try a more robust proprietary product. 
 

Unfortunately I didn’t store some of the components flat after unwrapping them and there has been a bit or warping . My fault entirely. So using a high tech laser guided precision tooled dewarping tool to sort the problem.

 

 

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First baseboard straightened out  and built . Went together so well great design. Left for the glue to harden for now but couldn’t resist a bit of a hint of things to come with the signal box I fettled last week.

 

 

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Baseboards now all built and after some time building rolling stock kits ( more on that later) I’m back on the layout .

 

Track is planned  mocked up and ordered and may arrive sometime this century so on with more mock ups and some buildings from what I have with me now.

 

I did a thread for the revamped Hornby signal box and I’m now taking bits of a Knightwing footbridge to start on the station itself . Here’s the start. 
 

 

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Very nice to see another layout from you, @lash. I did enjoy Milton Quay, and had a read back through the Portsea Town thread not so long ago, which was informative and very interesting to look at too. Your layouts are right up my street in terms of setting, and you always seem to find wonderful quirky buildings and kits to make them just that bit different. I shall keep an eye out for more of this one.

 

Adam

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Adam thanks for the comments so pleased you like MQ, its still a 200 miles away but hopefully as lock-down eases I will be able to get access to it and play trains while I build Melville Street

 

Portsea Town will re-appear one day as a through station . I think longer EMUs will look good snakeing their way through the trackwork,but that's for the future.

 

Melville Street will have a collection of mainly kitbashed and recycled buildings and i must admit I enjoy doing these more than the rolling stock kits I have been keeping myself busy with in recent weeks.  So as whatever I decide to build appears as an RTR item as soon as I start it as well, it will be buildings and engineering works for me until the track arrives. 

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AEB05B0D-191A-4730-9694-0D6D40A6F03B.jpeg.ef0cc69eb16f443f021ed89c3a451399.jpegWork on the stairs from the Knightwing kit which I’m pleased with as a pretty neat start . They really are a bit chocolate box branch line at the moment but will end up heavily weathered with the rest of the station buildings.

 

 

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Progress with Lcut brick arches coming together nicely. 
 

I’m mocking up and chopping and changing the layout plan using odd bits of track and Peco point templates . There will be a few compromises but I like the look of it and will post more pics soon.

 

 

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Been working intermittently on Melville  Street and have got to track laying.

 

All the SMS boards are done with 5mm foamboard as a track base. 
 

Checking clearances with some early 70s stock. 
 

 

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I have admired the Wills platform shelter kit for ages and the island platform at Melville Street will be perfect for the very Southern building.

 

As ever close up digital photos are very cruel on detail !

 

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Been working on Wills platform canopies to go over the shelter and I quite like the look, albeit somewhat missing in the support department for the moment.

 

The start of lockdown 2 seems to have shaken up my modelling mojo so hopefully Melville Street will be running before too long. Supplies of flux on the way to get wiring going. Point motors and switches have already arrived and general odds and ends ( plus an off piste Hornby Terrier I couldn’t resist given the name) purchased at Upstairs Downstairs in Sandown. 
 

 

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And here is the Terrier. Just gorgeous and how could I resist. Come on Hattons get those Southern 4 wheel coaches out and I can run a stunning replica of our local branch service, albeit on an urban 1970s layout. 
 

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Plenty done in the last couple of weeks and I’m taking a ground up and ground down approach.

 

Track is laid on .5mm foam board and is a mixture of new and second hand Peco points and Bachmann track, all code 100 and acquired during lockdown one. I wasn’t going to pay the silly prices being asked for Peco plain track on line,so it’s not perfect but neither am I so that’s fine by me. Third rail will follow.

 

Wiring (DC) and point motors are work in progress and has got to the oh bloody hell not again stage. I’m testing as I go along so hopefully no massive problems and it’s character building.

 

Here are some pics for those of you that like bare track and spaghetti.

 

 

 

 

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Many thanks Chris most encouraging. Hope all ok in Leek and sunny Staffordshire.

 

Wiring is all done with switches for sections and points installed in the front edge of the baseboards as this layout will be operated from the front.

 

Hoping to test everything and trial running at the weekend, so no doubt frustration and dreadful language will follow in  short order.

 

Once that is done there’s more track stuff to do like the third rail and buffers.

 

I’m planning to install dummy point motors. I’ll be using the old Hornby standard BR box from the Get Britain Modelling  Melville Street Signal Box thread and the story is the LSWR box was bombed in the blitz and the replacement came with some modern kit.

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Had some fun with installing and aligning point motors and two duff switches which needed replacement but sorted now and all seems sound and working and clicking as it should..

 

The layout is now upstairs in the garage loft which will one day be home to a continuous run but in the mean time is a decent dry place to work on Melville Street. I’m sticking to the ground up principle and have been tidying up the track and installed my first length of third rail using Peco components and code 60 rail.

 

I’ve checked Setrack supplement in this months RM and the layout Futers Fork is very familiar and the operation described is pretty well what l have in mind for Melville Street. Hardly surprising given the Futers inspiration for this layout.

 

Pics show the whole layout with fiddle yard and my first length of third rail.41F2A5F1-F0D6-40D6-ABB1-6F8BE22E2A10.jpeg.03b5ed28dd9111acb692fa860b8f8d0a.jpeg65DDE15C-E2F2-44B2-94C4-47FA26F9FF8C.jpeg.3a7b4659030913b42bdaa614dc578924.jpegEE3A4927-AF70-4AA8-B613-8E28B1817150.jpeg.7d962c0283647a5f0570180b82652d27.jpegCB763555-C616-4735-92A9-3D733E9A0726.jpeg.b98331a5764d9b031815397c14062e62.jpeg

 

 

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534F6B4B-EF21-4FB2-9C1D-02C81017456D.jpeg.21a205002063b3d9310b8a536691bf85.jpeg1DCFBE1A-B6AE-4E8D-AB45-ABB431FE0595.jpeg.5c83af77cbad40f6fd5dff6d3ab1240d.jpegNew year job done and all third rail is laid. 

Code 60 track plus Peco insulators is a maddening job, threading the insulators is fiddly as is drilling the sleepers. Any sort of curve creates a spring which makes gluing the insulators to the sleepers a challenge. The look is pretty good but I’m not sure how viable this would be on a larger layout. If anyone has ideas on a better way to portray the third rail I would be interested . Soldering to brass pins maybe ?

 

Anyway job done for Melville Street and I’ve test run with my blue Crompton and all is good. More testing with an EMU and parcels stock to be done before starting with weathering the track and building up the scenics.

 

 

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More testing and playing trains with my blue 2 hal and 2epb along with a class 8. All pretty good except the 2hals dummy pick up shoes foul the third rail in places. I have come across the problem before with a Hornby 2bil. I am reluctant to resort to surgery and have relaid some of the third rail.

 

I have also mystified myself with my attempts to wire sections. It all works but not quite as I envisaged. Pause for thought.

 

All in all the problems are detail and not mayor so scenic work will start from now.

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Last post was hangover from yesterday. Not sure what happened!

 

Good modelling this evening. Track weathered with Halfords rattle cans from their camouflage range and all running fine and tested after.

 

Started work on high level station building which I am modelling in half relief. Hope to give it a sort of LSWR neo-Georgian vibe. It’s plasticard on a foam board shell with Wills details. Tried making quoins, desperate job and I’ve ordered some Wills ones, worth it for my sanity.


 

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Just noticed I grabbed some English bond plasticard and I’m pretty certain LSWR used Flemish bond. I’ll cope but more haste and other cliches, lesson learnt.

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Making progress with the adapted Knightwing footbridge kit for the straits from high level station building to platform and a lot of head scratching working out the station building hipped roof geometry . Using graph paper geometry set and distant memories of O level maths . 
 

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