Camden Shed

[Froxfield2012]

Iain

 

You are more than welcome.  By way of Christmas and New Year greetings, here are a couple more Camden shots.  (You can see a bit more detail on the relevant building too!).  Both need a bit of cleaning up and I have left them as "uncropped" as possible to include surroundings.

 

 

Richard

[LNER4479]

That leads me onto another thought: I chose 1960-62 as a period because it is a window that allows me to run what I want. Specifically pre 62 as that was when 71000 was withdrawn, but as late as possible since several locos have been built with AWS and, for some of them I know the date of fitment. Then by 63 Camden became a diesel only depot. It also had to be post 1960 as that was when 92220 was built, and while it will be the only complete impostor on the layout I thought I might as well at least do it at the right time.

 

I'm thinking now that I might extend the period to something like 58 or 59-62

 

My reasoning goes like this:

By 61-62, Camden had a significant proportion of diesel power, and I will have very predominantly steam. For now, in fact, it is only steam. So if I am stretching the proportion of steam to 1956 levels, why not take the period back a little too?

Whichever combination of locos and stock I use will only be valid for one particular day/week/month/year anyway, For example, my justification for 44867 is that I have a photo of it bringing the Up Midlander under the bridge in 59, but I've built it in 62 condition with AWS.

Going a little earlier allows me to have a little more variation in coaching stock liveries - I can include the odd c and c corridor coach and some plain suburban stock. I have seen evidence of occasional blood and custard vehicles in 1960-61, but not enough information to work out which ones. Stock will still be mainly lined maroon but with a few % of others - but I wouldn't have to identify particular vehicles.

 

I'm building an approximation of Camden Shed, not a perfect replica on one particular afternoon, so there is nothing preventing a slight stretching of the window.

 

Any thoughts?

 

Iain

56-58 is very interesting period and very much BR steam's 'Indian Summer'. There was a genuine attempt to speed things up a bit following the long catch up of the wartime backlog of repairs / renewals (that had hitherto prevented a return to the pre-war speed exploits). This was when the emblem changed and the all-over maroon livery was introduced, along with new services such as the Caledonian. So a good excuse for a mix of coach liveries and a few old emblems.

 

Few diesels though! Mind you, for me that would be a distinct advantage...

[1BCamden]

the Pembroke....

[1BCamden]

"I'm building an approximation of Camden Shed, not a perfect replica on one particular afternoon, so there is nothing preventing a slight stretching of the window.

Any thoughts?

Iain"

 

An 'approximation' I would argue that point, more like a perfect interpretation, a very good one, Why not have a number of specific dates to allow you to vary your motive and rolling stock, but to those dates only.

I think with the exception of some minor track work and signalling the general architecture would have changed very little over those years,

Edited January 22, 2015 by 1BCamden

[92220]

Hi Stanley,

 

You're very kind as always. I don't know about a perfect interpretation but I do agree that it's definitely morphed into a more representative model than was perhaps envisaged at the start. I'm very happy with the level of fidelity given the constraints I have. Your advice is good regarding dates, though I probably won't try to create a perfect replica of the locos and stock on one particular day. I will stick with a range of representative and believable formations and locos from around 58 to 62, but mainly around 1960, and will assume a lower level of diesel takeover even in 62.

 

Not much done recently though.

 

I've begun the process of painting the rough stores - this is probably about 30% finished. Base layer of red brick. Wash of mortar colour, then eons spent dry brushing various colours - which I've slightly overdone in some places. In reality this building was utterly filthy, so whatever mess I make will be gradually covered under layers of weathering. I have worked out that the corrugated iron/asbestos did indeed over the gable end down as far as the door runner cover, and will add and paint this before I start on weathering the satin black of the roof.

 

 

Progressing with the shell of the Pembroke

 

 

Got to this point and realised I had forgotten to add the lintels. Ughhhhh....... Sills will go in after the windows.....

 

The windows are modified Tichy Trains bought cheaply off eBay. They sit recessed in the openings so I have made 10 thou mountings to attach them. A couple of the windows need to be built from scratch, and none are absolutely perfect, but they are close.

 

 

I also managed to pick up a couple of very nicely built LMS Suburbans for £25 the pair which seemed a bit of a bargain. A few ventilators have fallen off and need replacement, but overall they are quite decent. More to add to the growing pile ready for the paint shop when it's a little warmer.

 

 

 

Iain

[92220]

A brief update:

 

I decided that I had to do some intensive testing of the track and to tweak where necessary. When I built everything in the first place, it was tested with a bogie, then freewheeling coaches, and finally with a 9f once wired up. However, I began to work out that this doesn't sufficiently replicate what happens when 4-6-0s and pacifics pull rakes of coaches. My biggest mistakes were:

 

1. assuming that the 9f was the toughest test due to the wheelbase, but it's actually the most surefooted of all, and

2. not realising that I had set the coupling system I have adopted, courtesy of Tony Wright's inspiration, slightly too tight, so that the couplings were pressurising adjacent vehicles and unweighting them.

 

Now, to do all that, I had to remove all the stock I had accumulated in the FY, which meant I needed to put it all somewhere. I took the opportunity to build a series of stock storage drawer inserts out of foamboard as below:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

They fit into these plastic drawer units on special offer at some DIY outlet or other. I've now got enough storage for 168 locos or coaches. Which I won't fill. At least not for a while.

 

Foamboard and hot glue gun at the ready, I did something I've been wanting to do for a while, which is to build a representation of the shed building itself. The idea is that this will remain just a temporary placeholder to help me with perspective and so on. But I might end up building the real thing out of a foamboard shell clad as appropriate.

 

 

 

 

 

And how did the track shape up?

 

Well, a few turnouts needed minor tweaking. I'd set a couple of switch blades too high, and a couple of other curved facing turnouts had issues getting the wheels to take the tighter of the two routes. One needed checkrailing on the approach to the point blades to align light bogies correctly.

 

Mostly fine though, especially after just opening out the couplings slightly.

 

The only real issue is that both check railed diamonds next to the turntable are in need of relaying. The three turnouts are fine. Not sure how I will do this yet.

 

Iain

 

Edit: spelling

Edited April 8, 2015 by 92220

[Jol Wilkinson]

Iain,

 

you have made tremendous progress, which beats my output over the years hands down.

 

 

There are four more which I need to line out, etc. but my excuse is that I have been too involved in designing kits, etc. for a certain supplier of (mainly) pre-group models as well as extending my layout.

 

As usual you have produces great work. Keep it up.

 

Jol

[darren01]

So glad you back on with this layout, really missed your up date's , this is one of my favorite layouts on here, Keep up the good work.

Darren

[92220]

Somewhat off topic and yet, in a way, not at all......

 

I went to the GCR Railways at Work event yesterday, primarily to see 92214 running as 92220. I never saw Evening Star running in the 80's before the mainline ban, and obviously the chances of returning to steam are somewhere between zero and fag-paper slim. So, not knowing whether this repaint and renumber would ever be repeated, I thought I might as well make the trip. This is what started it all for me as a 6 year old boy, and hence the ongoing favouritism even as I have returned to modelling now.

 

Plenty of people clearly don't like this idea, and they are entitled to that view of course, but for me it was spectacularly good. I will never see 92220 in steam, and this is the best illusion I can imagine. Some locos have taken different identities in the past and more recently. 46220 and 46100 for starters, and didn't Bittern run as something else as well? More than anything, I felt that in some ways this was akin to 12" to the foot modelling - trying to recreate as far as possible some scenes from the past. Obviously, I fully appreciate that there is a lot more to running a preserved railway than that. Since I've also spent a few minutes in the past week renumbering and repainting some locos (4mm ones!), I was drawn to thinking how we give models a new identity too.

 

I took a few photos and videos, but Sunday was a cold grey breezy day, and proper photographers and videographers who took footage on the Saturday have a lot more worth seeing than I do.

 

These are embedded but they aren't mine. I thought I was merely copying the links but they appear to have embedded themselves.

 

 

 

 

All have some lovely sequences in bright sunshine.

 

 

 

Are two of my pics of much lower quality.

 

And one of the locos going through the painting, lining and numbering shop:

 

 

Iain

[Jock67B]

Iain,

The images didn't show on my iPad tonight! Perhaps pulled in case of copyright infringement?

Kind regards,

Jock.

PS, being an old f*rt, I was lucky enough to see it years ago when it was at Didcot! Very impressive,

Kind regards,

Jock.

[1BCamden]

Hi Jock,

seem to all be okay on an Oz iPad ?

[Black5]

Hi Iain,

Pleased to see things are moving ahead again. One thing i`d like to ask is," where do you find the time to progress as much as you have?"

I`m retired ( i`m 73) so i can spend a fair bit of time on my layout but i can`t match you for progress i`m afraid.

I seem to be spending a lot of time improving some of the things i did earlier.

Good to see you`ve started on the shed.

Best wishes,

Jim.

[darren01]

Hi

Have you thought of using Micro sol decal softener, have been using it for years on my kits.

It will help the decal to flatten to the model and stop the varnish from getting under the decal, once varnished the decal ends up looking like it is painted on.

Keep up the good work!.

Darren

[TrevorP1]

Hi

Have you thought of using Micro sol decal softener, have been using it for years on my kits.

It will help the decal to flatten to the model and stop the varnish from getting under the decal, once varnished the decal ends up looking like it is painted on.

Keep up the good work!.

Darren

Agreed. I tend to use MicroSol as a matter of course now. Also very helpful with rivet transfers. I first came across it when applying some very complicated decals to model rally cars. A bottle seems to last forever.

[92220]

Hi

Have you thought of using Micro sol decal softener, have been using it for years on my kits.

It will help the decal to flatten to the model and stop the varnish from getting under the decal, once varnished the decal ends up looking like it is painted on.

Keep up the good work!.

Darren

Thanks Darren. I do use microset and microsol as detailed on the bottles. Then coats of klear over the top as varnish.

The cab side lining is pretty good, partly as a result of that. The boiler bands were difficult though. Couldn't get the Modelmaster to work, so used older pressfix ones. They haven't been varnished and may get replaced yet.

 

Iain

[92220]

In what time I have had, I have spent a fair bit pushing forward our project to build our own house, so the Camden Shed layout has stalled a little. The only model buildings I've made have been of tentative plans!

 

Hopefully we will know soon what, if anything, we will be able to build, and the layout's future will be clearer. Options are:

 

1. This layout gets moved exactly as it is into the new place, in which the plan is to have a purpose built room. Camden Shed is built in sections so this is possible.

2. This layout forms the basis of the new layout but with slight extension - I could make it longer by inserting a section in the middle so that the shed and the distance from the Goods Depot to the signal box is not so compressed, and also I could make a lot more realistic representation of the goods yard itself with a foot more in width.

3. I build a new Camden Shed layout to scale. This would likely still be in OO but I have thought about EM. I can use all the back scenes, buildings and bridges etc that I have already.

 

So basically, all being well, Camden Shed will be completed in one form or other at some point. I'm just as enthusiastic about this particular site and I don't have any plans to do anywhere else.

 

Finally got round to making a two very short YouTube videos:

 

Black 5 44684 on a down suburban stopper (without any lamps, sorry!)

 

 

 

70044 Earl Haig on up parcels (ditto)

 

 

 

Iain

[sundodger]

Have been looking through all of your thread this morning, dog is still waiting to go out for its morning walk. What a task and the outcome is fanatic I just love engine sheds, but never thought about coping a prototype shed, I am doing one of the L & Y /L M S /BR but is not a prototype it is just based on a few different sheds in the Northwest. This one just inspires me to do better. Thank you

Sundodger

[darren01]

Any updates?

[92220]

Hi Darren,

 

Sadly not, but thanks for the interest.

 

I've not been in the shed since the summer, not because I don't want to, but just volume of work etc. I've now got what was supposed to be half term break coming up, but I have to go to represent the school at a conference in China and then run some staff training at schools there. It's all a bit mad to be honest. I'm just about to pack and wondering whether to try to put something in the case that I could do in the hotel room that doesn't get me locked up when it goes through the baggage scanner.

 

Some slow progress trickling through on the house though. Hopefully we will have good news before too long, and, if and when that comes through, I will be in a position to decide how Camden Shed will develop over the coming years.

 

Iain

[92220]

Nothing to report on Camden Shed, but a few railway and modelling-related pictures from my work trip to Shanghai over the past 9 days. I had one day free, and decided to try to see as much as I could. Only a few bits were relevant to modelling or railways and I’ll share them here. Especially as I've been wide awake since 2:45 this morning.

 

If you saw that a list of the top 20 tourist attractions in a city guide included the Urban Planning Centre, you could be forgiven for thinking that the rest of that city must be relatively devoid of interest. Not so. This place was fascinating, with some well-made models, including this one of one of the bridges in Shanghai:

 

 

 

Can’t remember the name of it off the top of my head, but it’s a twin span of a similar basic type as Regents Park Road bridge over the old LNWR mainline at Camden. This model, though, is 42 feet long. Mine is about 42cm.

Some nice building models:

 

 

 

 

These are at 1:75 and 1:80 so not far off 4mm scale.

 

Then you go up a floor and see this:

 

 

 

It’s an astonishing sight – the vision of what Shanghai will look like in 2020. It isn’t that far off it already as far as I can see. The model is a touch larger than a tennis court and relatively detailed given its scale, which I couldn't see quoted (but I can't read Chinese either). I estimate about 1:1000 looking at the height of the tallest buildings.

 

Not a big fan of heights but I’ve never been up a skyscraper either. So I had to give this a go. When I have been in New York, the queue for the Empire State Building has been long, and the price predictably eye-watering. The new Shanghai Tower at 632m is the 2nd highest building in the world, but isn’t yet finished. Next to it, the Shanghai World Financial Centre which looks like a bottle opener had no queue and was £18 to get to the top. The viewing “skywalk” on the 100th floor is about 15m below the 492m peak, and you get vertiginous views plus the nice little touch of a glass floor. The point for RMWeb though, is another beautiful model of the area, which is fully detailed and lit, on a speeded-up daily cycle with lights, sun, night, thunderstorms etc. Very neatly done.

 

 

 

 

 

 

And rather more gratuitously, this is what you can see from the top of the real thing:

 

 

The Jinmao tower that you are looking down on (like a cross between the Empire State building and a pagoda) is a small matter of 420m tall.

 

The three towers from the elevated pedestrian walkway outside.

 

 

Back now, but off to Italy this afternoon for 2 days.

 

Iain

 

Edit: here is another I've managed to resize though it's gone a bit blurry from the original 6mb

Edited October 29, 2015 by 92220

[LNER4479]

That model of the city is simply AMAZING!   Thanks for posting.

 

I know where I'm heading if I ever get sent to Shanghai...

[Jock67B]

Evening Iain,

Thanks for sharing those truly inspirational photos with us - anything's possible after seeing those!

Kind regards,

Jock.

[92220]

I've made a start on building the coaling tower today. It's a fairly massive structure at 95ft tall and 98ft long or 380 x 392mm. It's also not very easy to work out how to build it, or at least not for me. I finally decided to build the two bunkers and hoist cover as a box (in itself an odd shape), which will then sit in a frame consisting of the legs and jigger platform. At least that's the idea. The box so far is made out of 0.060 and 0.080 plasticard, with some internal bracing. I've tried also to be sparing with the mekpak so hopefully all these measures will prevent warping. If it does warp, maybe back to the drawing board.

 

I have enlarged a scaled plan to 4mm scale and have various photos to work from too.

 

 

 

Meeting with the architect on Thursday to discuss house plans - hoping that we can ensure the loft will be the right dimensions to accommodate either this layout or a better version of Camden Shed. I've worked out that I need 25' 5" length to do the scenic side exactly to scale between the two bridges as I have here.

 

Iain

[philbax]

Good to see you back 'in task'  What is the book/magazine you have open for reference

 

Phil

[92220]

Hi Phil,

 

It's British Railways Illustrated vol. 3 no. 10. July 1994. An excellent 16 page spread on Camden Shed 1953-64, and one of my most useful resources. It's quite well thumbed now, a bit like MRJ 172 and a couple of issues of Backtrack.

 

I hope that taking a couple of pics showing roughly what is in it does not infringe copyright - I will gladly remove if it does.

 

 

 

 

 

I've made a little bit more progress on the coaling plant, and I hope to get a bit more done over the next few weeks.

 

 

 

 

Iain