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Construction work on the factory has progressed quite well over the last couple of days. The chimney belongs to the boiler house in box 2, so another one will have to be made. The ground levels in this box 5 have been built up using the foam base from supermarket pizza. I made the siding a bit long here, so the rails will have to disappear beneath the dirt when I landscape the area. Use of foam is good as it's a) free! b) it recycles it, and c) you can dig holes in it, create ruts etc.

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post-24883-0-40804500-1541441493_thumb.jpgChimney now built. I used a Scalescenes Boiler House one as I already have two square section chimneys on the layout and a round one would be a nice contrast. Rather than score the base layer to produce an octagonal stack, as per instructions, I carefully rolled the former to give me a truly round, tapering section. After covering it with the specially printed, curved brickpaper, I added a stone projecting cap and some reinforcing bands.

 

Before I finish the factory, and fix the lower section in place, I had to construct the back street to go in front of the terraced house flat at the back of the box. I made this as a unit to be glued in complete. The base is more polystyrene pizza base, as is the stone sill section for the railings. I indented the roadway base to give that characteristic twin groove effect, often seen on cobbled back streets where they are worn and sunken in by iron rimmed cart wheels. The cobbles were again the DIY chain wallpaper, with potholes dug out, painted with tester pot emulsion wash and grotted up with modelling ash and real coal fire ash. Some suitably distressed Ratio spear point fencing complets this item.

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Edited by Booking Hall
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5 DAYS TO GO!

 

Today I've painted the cobbled Street (Which I've called 'Eagle Street'), above the boiler house, made the second canal tunnel entrance, made the corrugated shed which screens the exit to the fiddle yard and added some detail to the factory flat roof. Oh, and done a bit of ballasting and started painting the 'scrap'.

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1 DAY TO GO! (not sure what happened to day 2  :scratchhead: )

 

Canal finished and 'slot in' strips made to hide the gap left where I've cut the front of the box so it will lie flat. I was going to use some hessian as the backing for a home-made scenic mat for this, but I realised it just wasn't going to be convincing, so went for this approach instead. Both the weedy canal bank and scrapyard wall (as it ended up) are constructed on a strip of balsa wood. The wall is one of Model railway Scenery's downloads. The disused railway bridge has had its security fence (suitably holed by urban explorers) added, and the track given some light vegetation. The scrapyard crane, which is an old Matchbox Toys 'Coles Jumbo crane', has had windows added using PVA, been weathered and a hook and cable installed. Telegraph poles add some typical railway infrastructure. Almost there!

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E-DAY -2 (EXHIBITION DAY -2)

 

Well, I got it finished - at least it looks finished! I didn't have time to weather up the railings which were the final addition to the bridge section, nor to add rainwater pipes and gutters to the factory - but then is a model railway ever finished?

 

It got favourable responses from many of the visitors, particularly from, shall we say, more mature visitors who remembered when the urban landscape looked like this. Not so much from most of the children who wanted to know why the trains ran so slowly!! I also had an interesting chat with a chap who actually looks after a full size version of the Coles 'Jumbo' crane in my scrapyard, at a museum site, so a 'thumbs up' from him too!

 

It more than achieved my aim of making the layout much more interesting to operate, and children had fun waiting for trains disappearing into tunnels and watching for them coming out the other side, and being fooled when it reversed down a different line. Interestingly, many people were not aware that the layout was built into boxfiles, until told, and even then one person insisted on coming round behind to check for himself! At least two people said they had been inspired to try something like this for themselves, which is great.

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  • 2 months later...
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  • RMweb Gold

Very late to this party, but just want to say thank you very much Paul for taking the time to post your wisdom and progress on here. It’s been a fascinating thread to follow for the past (most enjoyable) hour and wonderfully inspiring. I’m twitching to do a box file myself, but without a computer printer might have to get creative with the scratch building! All the best, Andrew

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  • 3 weeks later...
On 09/01/2021 at 14:27, Andrew D said:

Very late to this party, but just want to say thank you very much Paul for taking the time to post your wisdom and progress on here. It’s been a fascinating thread to follow for the past (most enjoyable) hour and wonderfully inspiring. I’m twitching to do a box file myself, but without a computer printer might have to get creative with the scratch building! All the best, Andrew

Thank you for stopping by and writing those kind words Andrew, and the best of luck with your own creation.

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  • 1 year later...
1 hour ago, davidparker172 said:

I am very very late to this party but i have been blown away by this build.

So many questions and queries

Just wanted to say rally well done

Is there any way to get back all the missing images from early on in the build??

Hello David, and welcome! It's good to know people are still occasionally reading this blog, and thank you for your kind words. Re-uploading all the images which disappeared during site maintenance last year has been on my 'to do' list for a while, and I've completed it on my 'Docks away' posts. Since you've asked, perhaps now is the time to start on this one. It will take a while though, but I'll obviously start at the beginning, a very good place to start!

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