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Star Lane, Hooley - next show is Macclesfield in April 2024.


roundhouse
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In just a minor distraction from the title, I was looking at Google satellite view and noticed that Salfords station - just a few miles south of your chosen location - seems to have a disproportionate amount of trackwork and sidings compared to the now (in)frequency of service.  Would you happen to know what this used to serve?

 

http://goo.gl/maps/xzo86

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  • RMweb Gold

While thumpers didn't often run in passenger service over this stretch, there were daily workings of one or more units to and from St Leonards West Marina depot for maintenance. These came off the Oxted Line at South Croydon, reversing there in the RVL line to head south over the modelled stretch. In the up direction, I think they had to go to East Croydon to reverse.

 

This is all looking very good. Our obsession with layouts that are station-centric really has little value when allowing decent models to stretch their legs is actually the objective. That said, you have built yourselves a scenic challenge!

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Star Lane!!

 

Love it. Been down on the line there once and can remember the covered way.

 

Can't wait to see all those EMU's running.

 

Use to hear DEMUs on the Brighton line at Gatwick on a summer's Friday or Saturday night around midnight. Understood they were refuelling at Selhurst having come from Hastings.

 

Dave

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Having lived within hearing distance of the Oxted line I used to lie in bed listening to late night services or early morning ones. There were fewer to listen out for once the East Grinstead line was electrified but it is a sound that I do miss.

 

I has to get a Kernow one and when Mike said he was going to build Star Lane I had the empty stock parking excuse to run it.

 

There's at least 4 of us looking forward to run all our deiselmand electric stock on this layout.

 

Mike is busy completing the wiring at the moment then he has quite a bit of ballasting to do before laying the third rail.

 

He also stocked up with more Plastruct etc at Railex to start building the flyover.

 

Ian

Edited by roundhouse
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  • 5 weeks later...
  • RMweb Gold

Just a short update.

 

Mike has now more or less finished all the wiring and installation of  turnout solenoids. He has also done a lot of work on the bridge deck and started some of the ballasting. However he is now going to paint the sides of the rials before any more ballasting is done with one of the Woodland Scenics rail colour paint pens.

 

Another one day complete set up in the garage is planned in July to fully test the electrics and track alignments plus make a start on the scenic works. The scenic side will be fairly simple as its mainly embankment slopes.

 

Signals both semaphore and colour light will be working but only manual switching  for the time being.

 

We were discussing the installation of the third rail over the weekend and the idea is to solder it to pins for sturdyness with some brass screws fitted with a soldered fishplate at each end for the third rial to move in to allow for expansion but give some strength at baseboard ends.

 

the Peco insulators will be cut to fit around the pins etc.

 

Photos to follow in the next few weeks.

 

Ian

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  • 2 weeks later...
  • RMweb Gold

The first building for the layout is now underway. It's not much as its a Ratio southern concrete wayside hut.

 

I have cleaned up the mouldings but wasn't sure which way the doors and windows were. So this morning I was on the correct side of the train to see this hut which still exists just North of the fly over on the up side Redhill line. It can now be assembled.

 

Mike is working on the flyover itself and it may well be complete by the time the layout is set up again this Sunday to do a full running test of the track and wiring. Mike has also been installing the working signals and doing more ballasting.

 

Hopefully a fair amount of the cutting scenery will be in place by the end of the day.

 

A further two day working session is planned for the middle of August.

 

Some photos to follow on Sunday.

 

Ian

Edited by roundhouse
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We are still planning on a work day this Sunday to fault find any problems with the electrics and start the scenery.

 

The first building, the SR concrete hut is build and weathered with just the doors to paint and add glazing.. Ok its only a tiny structure but its a start. The SER signal box is next but I would really like to find some drawings of an SER box before commencing as this style  was fairly standard bar the height that they sat at depending on location.

 

A serous start on the scenery formation will also be made so that when we have the next planned 2 day working session we can really start showing some finished scenery.

 

The layout needs to be ready for the Barrow In Furness show in October 2013 and Mike is now spending all his spare time (apart from helping at shows with the other layouts) to get the layout ready. i believe that he has been installing semaphore and colour light signals recently.

 

Hopefully some more photos will be posted after showing progress this Sunday.

 

Ian

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Today we had Star Lane set up in my parents garage.

 

The main task was to test the electrics. There were a few issues but by the evening it was all working well.

 

A start on the scenery formation was also made along with temporarily locating thr first builing which is a southern concrete wayside hut.

 

Plenty of pink foam board can be seen.

 

We are jow planjing a two day wok session to complete the scenery formation and finish the ballasting.

 

The photos show some third rail in place.

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Thanks Pete

 

Mike is spending much of his spare time working on the layout (hence why he hasn't yet sorted out joining RMweb) and hes done a lot so apart from doing electrics and the bridge walls etc hes also laid some third rail, painted the rails sides on all of the scenic areas and started the ballasting so we are just giving him a bit of a boost in many areas. With 3 - 34 of us working on the layout on these few work days it really helps sort out any of the problems etc.

 

One issue that we did encounter is that a 12 car rake of Hornby Pullmans would keep derailing yet all other stock that we have tested seems fine. I even checked the back to back on the Pullmans and they were fine, so we think its the close coupling mechanism doesn't work very well with this many coaches. When we shortened the rake they seemed to run better. The Hornby 5Bel x 2 works fine.

 

A few more photos taken yesterday plus one of the Southern portal of the Redhill lines. We are hoping that the Northern portal is similar as thats the one we need to model but access to photo it is near on impossible.

 

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Edited by roundhouse
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I don't know if "cab ride" videos might be of any use to you for those "hard to photograph" bits? 

 

This is Redhill to Clapham Junction.The southern end of what I know as Merstham Tunnel is at about 3m 30.

 

 

 

This one is London Bridge to Redhill.  The northern portal is at about 29m00 ish.

 

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I didn't even think of looking on Youtube!

 

Thanks for those. The train is heading into the dun and shadow of the northern portal do not very clear but it would appear to be similar to the southern portal.

 

Regards

Ian

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I knew I had seen drawings of a SER box in one of my books, so tonight I decided to have a look for it.

 

Bingo!

 

There are 4mm scale drawings of Holmthorpe box in Redhill in the OPC book ' A pictorial Record of Southern Signals' by G Pryor.

 

Star Lane Box is of the same style but much lower. These plans will be ideal for most of the dimensions of the box so in the next few days work will start on the box for the layout.

 

Ian

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After our one day working session just over a week ago, Mike has been doing some modifications to the upper level baseboard joints to make them more robust. Also further tweaks to the turnout motors.

 

I managed to get some suitable sized Evergreen shiplap styrene to allow me to commence the SER box so hope to have the basic structure done for the weekend.

 

This weekend we have a two day session to work on the ballasting and main scenery formation. We had a short meeting over bacon butties yesterday morning sitting in glorious weather down at Tinker Park Rail Gala working out the list of materials required and what we can achieve each day.

 

Mike also gave his 2 HAP (converted from a Bachmann 2EPB) on the On30 layout we were helping on.

 

This is the big weekend which should see the layout massively transformed and will be the last chance to allow Mike to then work on the boards individually or as a pair set up before one more one day session in September to do a final test run and train flit into his car so that we will then know how many vehicles we will need to get the layout to Barrow In Furness in October.

We think it will all fit in his car, fingers crossed!!

 

 

Photos to follow this weekend.

 

Ian

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This morning I have made a start on the SER box using the drawings for Holmthrorp box as a guide . and adjusting to suit the phot in the link in the first post of this thread.

 

I have about an hour and a half to get the main structure together before setting off to work on the layout with the rest of the team.

More photos to follow this weekend.

Ian

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It day two of the big push on the layout.

 

We now have most of the ballasting in place with the reindeer to go down this morning.

 

The scenic formation is now in place on half the boards with the harder bits done o this should also be in place by the end of today.

 

We have had to move the location of the SER box. The layout isn't a scale model so this is just another compromise but the essence of the location remains..

 

The first coat of filler is in a number of boards so a second smoother layer will also go on today.

 

Fascia panels were stained last night before going to the pub. It's dry this morning o another messes job out of the way.

 

Ian

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A few photos taken this evening showing the progress to day. Some Woodland Scenics turf laid on two boards. This will eventually be covered with static grass but at least we are now getting boards to a semi finished state.

Mike has three days of the August Bank holiday to push on with the scenery and two months to go before its first show to get the structures in place. I will finish the SER box and may do the LBSCR box aswell.

We had a few hours playing trains which picked up a couple of faults with one being rectified and the other, Mike will have to spend some time on but the layout still works in DC with it although we won't be able to do part DC and part DCC till he finds that fault.

A silly moment with my Czech loco and wagons giving them a run til Dobris is built!

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The transformer building arrived in the post the other day. I thought the box was a bit small. Turns out I had ordered the N scale one and not the OO one - doh!!!

 

Anyway, Phatbob has come to the rescue and picked one up from Arcadia models last night so Mike will get it at the weekend at Midland Railex.

 

Last night I continued constructing the cutting support structure which hides the fiddleyard. It now hides the whole of this up to where a road bridge will cross the tracks to hide the entrance into the fiddleyard. There is now just one board with now scenic work yet started on it.

 

Tonight we take the layout down in my parents garage and Mike takes it home.

 

The scenery will now be very much for him to continue and complete along with the panels to box the layout up etc, ready for the next and possibly final work session in mid / late September when we will do a rehearsal set up for the Barrow In Furness show in October.

 

Ian 

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