Stowbury

[Banger Blue]

Welcome to British Rail Stowbury

 

It’s the early 1980s, Stowbury is a thriving market town on the Welsh Marches Line between Craven Arms & Shrewsbury. Once part of the Great Western Railway, it now lies just within the boundary of the London Midland Region of BR.

Originally named Stowbury Junction, although the actual junction with the line to Buildwas via Much Wenlock was at Marsh Farm Junction just to the North of the town, it lost the Junction suffix not long after passenger traffic ceased on the Much Wenlock line in 1951.

The Station was originally built with two through platforms and a number of bay platforms at the Shrewsbury end of the Station to cater for local passenger & parcels/mail traffic. A plan to build a branch off to the south to link with the Bishops Castle Railway at Horderley never came to fruition, although the reasons why have been lost in the mists of time!

 

The Model:

 

Stowbury is completely fictional, I have constructed (a very loose term indeed) a 4ft by 18 inch baseboard which will never win any woodworking prizes. The intention is to model the bay platform area as if seen from a passenger sat on a train at one of the through platforms. Most of the buildings will be made out of card, either Metcalfe kits or from the many download websites available. Set in the period 1983 - 1987 the stock will mainly be BR Blue, there may be the odd interloper in some new fangled liveries! This will not win any prizes for a speed build but will be a slow burn build as and when Family, work and funds allow!

 

Stowbury Junction:

 

 

Stowbury:

 

 

 

[branchie]

Looking forward to seeing this develop.

 

Slowly

 

Branchie.

[Banger Blue]

Looking forward to seeing this develop.

 

Slowly

 

Branchie.

 

I do hope you have the patience of a Saint then!

[Banger Blue]

For those of you that like track plans, an AnyRail / Paint effort showing the highly imaginative and complex trackwork and associated scenic bits!!

 

[Banger Blue]

Since posting the plan above, I have decided to flip it so the exit to the FY and the Signal Box will now be on the left hand side. Most of the work done so far has been building the various structures that will make up the Stn area.

 

To conceal the exit offstage, I have plumped for the usual road overbridge, this is a modified metcalfe structure, using a couple of the Wills Vari-girder kits:

 

 

A view of the bridge in situ ( no bus, well there is a BR crew bus!)

 

 

No track has actually been layed yet, what you can see here is some old lengths I had lying around and am using to give a rough idea of where things are going to go. The exit hole still needs to be cut in the backscene.

[Banger Blue]

I had planned on using three of these but now I've built the first, I think just one more will suffice.

 

[Banger Blue]

Although prototype pictures of the Type 15 Signal Box show that the box nameboards hang from the roof at either end, where my box is to be located I decided to add the name board to the front wall, I much prefer it there! I have also added a Ratio Signal Box Interior.

 

 

 

 

[ess1uk]

Nice work so far

[Banger Blue]

It's been well over a year since my last post on Stowbury, since then there has been an enforced house move but it did have a silver lining, instead of a cold draughty garage for a home which did little for motivation to work on the layout, it now resides in a nice cosy 'man cave'.

 

Work has been moving along in fits and starts but has seen track layed, wired up (DCC), the sleepers weathered and the majority of ballasting done. Most of the structures are complete but will not be fixed in place yet (aim to be adding lighting).

 

Some photos of progress, along with some arty-farty out of focus shots

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I do like that last one so had a little play with the photo edit tools on the iPad (nothing too fancy!)

 

 

Hopefully the next update won't take another 12 months or so!

[MarshLane]

Your layout looks good Dougie, especially that 40! Look forward to seeing more progress

 

Rich

[The Ghost of IKB]

Good to see an update at last. Some nice photos there, and nice manly wall paper in the man cave!

[Banger Blue]

Good to see an update at last. Some nice photos there, and nice manly wall paper in the man cave!

The 'man cave' was the landlords' daughters room, I suppose I should ask if I can redecorate to a more 'manly' neutral style but thank you for the kind comments.

[Shed]

any more updates?

[Banger Blue]

any more updates?

Hi Shed

 

Thanks for the interest, the only thing of note since the last update is the installation of various lights (street lights, wall lamps etc) but these are still to be wired up!

 

 

 

Stowbury has taken a bit of a backseat to my entry for the Cake Box Challenge:

 

http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/127281-on-the-fuel-point/

 

Now that is virtually complete, I really should crack on with Stowbury.

 

Edited to add photos

Edited April 22, 2018 by Banger Blue

[Banger Blue]

Taking those photographs reminded me that I had actually done more for Stowbury albeit not on the actual layout.

 

On the motive power front:

 

Bachmann’s Class 47001 has been renumbered to 47198:

 

 

Just waiting reuniting with it’s chassis after that gets a spot of light weathering.

 

Bachmann’s 40159 has been renumbered 40181 and awaits some light weathering.

 

 

47001 may not be 100% accurate for doing 47198 but was close enough for me! I wanted 47198 on my layout because of this photo taken circa 1983 at Chester Depot:

 

[Mike Storey]

Only just caught your thread. I really like what you have done. Looking forward to more!

[Banger Blue]

Thought it about time for an update, so what’s been happening at Stowbury:

 

I had recently picked up a packet of Metcalfe station clocks so spent an hour or so making these up and they now adorn the platforms at Stowbury. Quite fiddly with my sausage fingers but they don’t look too bad once in position:

 

 

One of my biggest stumbling blocks after baseboard construction is the electric side of things but having installed the lamps I decided it was time to grab the bull by the horns and wire them up. Although they will be on the same power supply, I’ve decided to wire the wall lamps, street lights, station lamps and the Signal Box on seperately switched circuits so I can operate them independently.

 

First up as a test run was the wall lamps. The wiring is not exactly neat and would probably make an electrician weep but I was just hoping to get them to work

 

Wired up, I plugged the power supply in an lo and behold, let there be light:

 

 

Quite chuffed with myself for a) working lights and b) not blowing myself up in the process, I then thought about switches, I can’t just keep unplugging the power supply. A quick scrabble through the junk box found these, remnants from my teenage layout:

 

Old Hornby isolation track switches:

 

 

One was quickly wired in to the circuit and I again amazed myself - I had on/off lights at the flick of a lever!

 

I picked this up on eBay, for a couple of quid, recently as well. It’s 10cm x 10cm aluminium and will adorn the front fascia of the layout once I get round to it!

 

 

Some general shots:

 

 

 

 

 

 

Thanks for looking.

[Covkid]

My first visits to Shrewsbury bring memories of 40s on Guide Bridge - Bayston Hill ballast hopper trains, especially split Headcode 40s, but also from memory 47198 seemed common.

Edited November 13, 2018 by Covkid

[Banger Blue]

Very quick post to find my way round after the latest forum update.

Amongst other bits & pieces for the railway, for Christmas SWMBO got me some scenics from Scale Model Scenery, one of which was the sheet of pre-printed Road Names, I was just thinking of going for a generic name like Station Road (boring I know!)

On perusing the choice of names however, I saw ‘Albert Road’. My Dad was called Albert, he passed away in 2017, so there was really only one choice of road name to go on the layout:

 

Edited February 2, 2019 by Banger Blue

[Banger Blue]

As mentioned above, other kits received for Xmas from SMS were the 1970’s Portable Office and Modern Billboards kit.

 

 

Unfortunately the sheet of modern posters included with the kit was just too modern for the mid 1980s, (the “Hello Boys” wonderbra advert didn’t appear until 1994! Gutted  )

I sourced some 1980s adverts and film posters from t’internet but as provided they were too small for the billboards . I have however scanned them and resized using ‘Word’. 1984’s “The Terminator” can be seen in the pic above, although not yet fixed in place so may move yet. the second billboard from the kit has yet to be built.

 

The 1970s portable office has yet to have the roof fixed down (hence why it has a bit of a gap at the right hand side). I have yet to decide if there will be an interior modelled. The signs on the office door were left over from a sheet of signs (scalescenes I think).

 

The area around the office is going to be a small store / dumping ground for the local PW and S&T gangs so expect some general clutter like piles of old sleepers, oils drums etc. The grounded van body is from an old Cooper-craft kit whose under frame had seen better days. I borrowed an idea from @KNP (Little Muddle) for the vans roof and used several layers of (clean) toilet paper stuck down with PVA glue to give a better texture, it now looks as if it has been reroofed with the black felt you see on shed roofs. Since the photo was taken, the van has been toned down with some weathering powders. Again not fixed in place, it’s final resting place is to be finalised.

[Banger Blue]

One kit that I think will really test my patience will be this one from ‘Ten Commandments’ - the Station Luggage Trolley:

 

 

I have never worked with an etched brass kit before and this looks rather fiddly! I have another two kits to do as well. Has anybody had any experiences with this particular kit and could possibly pass on some handy tips please?

[Banger Blue]

No updates for ages then three come along at once 

 

Not a real update though, I thought I would jump on the bandwagon and have a play with this website (online photo editor) as have several other folk in RMWeb land:

 

http://funny.pho.to

 

 

 

 

 

 

[calvin Streeting]

Someone been time travelering with a box browning

[davidprentice]

On 16/02/2016 at 19:24, Banger Blue said:

I had planned on using three of these but now I've built the first, I think just one more will suffice.

 

 

Hi Dougie

 

What a cracking little layout! I must ask about the above platform canopy as looks brilliant - is it scratchbuilt or a kit? Fancy one or two of these!!

 

Best

 

Dave

Edited August 2, 2019 by davidprentice

[Banger Blue]

2 hours ago, davidprentice said:

 

Hi Dougie

 

What a cracking little layout! I must ask about the above platform canopy as looks brilliant - is it scratchbuilt or a kit? Fancy one or two of these!!

 

Best

 

Dave

 

‘Thanks for the kind comments Dave. The canopy is a kit from the Metcalfe Models range. In fact the vast majority of the main structures are all Metcalfe; station buildings, platforms, retaining walls canopies etc. All built ‘straight out the packet’ with the exception of the road bridge which as been chopped about a bit, reinforced with Balsa wood and also uses the Wills ‘vari-girder’ kit.

 

On Stowbury, there is also a few of the Metcalfe “mini-kits” - GWR platform benches, the news kiosk, station clocks. I do really enjoy building the Metcalfe Kits.