Building a modelrailwayscenery bus depot

[Booking Hall]

Fuelling point completed. This makes up into a really nice  item. I added the delivery hose, made from wire painted black. I also added some extra diesel stains to the base.

[Booking Hall]

Having built the fuel oil tank and delivery point, I spent some time positioning them along the front of the display board, leaving room for a pavement and half a road width so that buses could pull up at a stop there. Then I went away and looked at the layout again, changed it around a bit, thought about it some more, and then glued down the urinal and oil tank. half an hour later I looked at it again and thought "that looks crowded, why didn't I put the urinal facing the left hand street" Doh!!! So I had to carefully prize it up and reposition it. After a night's sleep it still looks good so that's where it's now going. It also makes more space in front of the depot.

[Booking Hall]

Well, the walls and pavements have taken as long to build as did the garage itself! It's quite a fiddly job arranging the wall lengths so that the recessed panels don't come too close to the wall ends, or piers, but I've got there in the end.

 

I made the walls from the Model railway Scenery Victorian wall download, and made it double-sided. I glued the core wraps onto 1.3mm mounting board and then stuck them back-to-back. The panels wraps were stuck to cereal box card, about 0.7mm thickness. Which gives an overall wall thickness of around 4.5mm, or just over a scale foot, which looks about right. The copings were also stuck to 1.3mm card.These could probably do with being thicker.

[Booking Hall]

With the wall and pavement finished I've turned to making some of the smaller details, like these 45gallon oil drums from a Wordsworth Model Railway download. These turn out to be only about 2/3rds the size of scale real ones, but that is because you use an office hole punch to produce the lids, so that governs the diameter and, proportionately, the height. If I knew where my set of hole punches was, I'd have a go at re-scaling them, but I'm running out of time to find them and complete this build, so they'll have to do!

[Booking Hall]

Well, that's it complete. I didn't bother to add sills and lintels to the office block in the end, as it's not that visible really, and I was running out of time! I still need to make a box for it to go in as well. Final detail included some roadway plates, bits of scrap and rubbish (piping, lumps of wood etc.), a Ratio telegraph pole, an Airfix street lamp and a home-made bus stop sign (which I haven't made tall enough!). Some short static grass was applied with a puffer bottle, some home-mixed leaf/moss/general vegetative stuff scattered around the bottoms of walls and the like, and the roads and pavings had a bit of a brush over with some weathering powder.

 

What have I learned from this build. Well, if doing it again i would definitely print the main windows onto transparent film, and cut out the printed ones on the internal wall wrap, and I would replace the brickwork wraps to the apex of each roof with the corrugated asbestos print instead, as that probably would have been more prototypical. There would have been no need for heavy brickwork up there. I'd also add some roof vents just to make the roof more interesting.

 

This is a big item and you would need a large model railway layout to be able to include one. The dimensions of the building are 540x175x165mm high, and the base I've fitted it to is 600x390mm. Realistically, a bus depot like this would probably be at least twice the depth of the model. This has been an enjoyable diversion from strict railway modelling, but with a Hattons Barclay 0-4-0ST on the way, it's back the straight and narrow now.

[katwigan]

About 11teen out of 10 I think Sir, brilliant overall and closeup views.

Very well done.

Kevan

[Andy W]

A really good piece of modelling, and excellent step by step photography.

Having worked extensively in the bus industry, I'd love to know where the prototype of the modelrailwayscenery bus depot actually is/was, because there are some decidedly odd design features. Firstly the height - a bus operator wouldn't normally build a depot with so much brickwork over and above the door height unless they needed extra headroom inside for installing overhead lifting gear or fixed jacks to raise a double decker so that fitters could work underneath the chassis. But the architectural style predates the fixed jack era, there would have been pits instead. Any depot as big as this would have had at least some maintenance facility built-in.

 

On the other hand it postdates use for trams/trolleybuses that needed overhead wire clearance. The round section support pillars inside the depot are unusual, you mainly see them in converted tram depots where there was no risk of the trams running into them. They were avoided wherever possible in purpose built bus depots. Then there's the fuelling point. These were most commonly just inside the depot entrance, rather than as a free-standing structure, and having a double-sided fuelling shelter is odd, as an operator would normally specify all the fuel fillers to be on the same side of the vehicle in their whole fleet. You couldn't fill two buses at once anyway as there's only one fuel pump.

I'm not saying there has never been a depot like the one the kit represents, but I'd dearly like to know where it is!

[Booking Hall]

About 11teen out of 10 I think Sir, brilliant overall and closeup views.

Very well done.

Kevan

Many thanks Kevan.

[Booking Hall]

A really good piece of modelling, and excellent step by step photography.

Having worked extensively in the bus industry, I'd love to know where the prototype of the modelrailwayscenery bus depot actually is/was, because there are some decidedly odd design features. Firstly the height - a bus operator wouldn't normally build a depot with so much brickwork over and above the door height unless they needed extra headroom inside for installing overhead lifting gear or fixed jacks to raise a double decker so that fitters could work underneath the chassis. But the architectural style predates the fixed jack era, there would have been pits instead. Any depot as big as this would have had at least some maintenance facility built-in.

 

On the other hand it postdates use for trams/trolleybuses that needed overhead wire clearance. The round section support pillars inside the depot are unusual, you mainly see them in converted tram depots where there was no risk of the trams running into them. They were avoided wherever possible in purpose built bus depots. Then there's the fuelling point. These were most commonly just inside the depot entrance, rather than as a free-standing structure, and having a double-sided fuelling shelter is odd, as an operator would normally specify all the fuel fillers to be on the same side of the vehicle in their whole fleet. You couldn't fill two buses at once anyway as there's only one fuel pump.

I'm not saying there has never been a depot like the one the kit represents, but I'd dearly like to know where it is!

Hello Andy, thanks for your kind words and also for the very helpful information about prototypical arrangements. I can't say much about the design of the depot buildings, except that they did strike me as being rather tall as well. I was tempted to add some inspection pits, but the depth of the building isn't really enough to have them in the right orientation. The fuel tank and refuelling point are not part of the kit, I got them from elsewhere and I have to take the blame for putting them where I did, although it did cross my mind also that right in the middle at the front probably isn't the most logical place, but it works from a conservation of space perspective! As the intended recipient of the model is an ex. bus driver, I hope he's not going to be too upset with my slightly cavalier approach to bus depot management!!

[Sandhole]

Hello Andy, thanks for your kind words and also for the very helpful information about prototypical arrangements. I can't say much about the design of the depot buildings, except that they did strike me as being rather tall as well. I was tempted to add some inspection pits, but the depth of the building isn't really enough to have them in the right orientation. The fuel tank and refuelling point are not part of the kit, I got them from elsewhere and I have to take the blame for putting them where I did, although it did cross my mind also that right in the middle at the front probably isn't the most logical place, but it works from a conservation of space perspective! As the intended recipient of the model is an ex. bus driver, I hope he's not going to be too upset with my slightly cavalier approach to bus depot management!!

All modelling is a compromise.

Who amongst us has created a totally dimensionally perfect model?

OK, there is Retford!!!

It is all about atmosphere and I think you have done that in spades.

It brings back memories of the LUT depot on the Swinton road near to the East Lancs Road.

Nice Job!!

            Chris.

[Andy W]

Hello Andy, thanks for your kind words and also for the very helpful information about prototypical arrangements. I can't say much about the design of the depot buildings, except that they did strike me as being rather tall as well. I was tempted to add some inspection pits, but the depth of the building isn't really enough to have them in the right orientation. The fuel tank and refuelling point are not part of the kit, I got them from elsewhere and I have to take the blame for putting them where I did, although it did cross my mind also that right in the middle at the front probably isn't the most logical place, but it works from a conservation of space perspective! As the intended recipient of the model is an ex. bus driver, I hope he's not going to be too upset with my slightly cavalier approach to bus depot management!!

The majority of older depots, particularly where space is short, have underground fuel tankage. But  that's an excellent model of a diesel fuel tank, and I did manage a depot that had a tank just like it, except that ours was in the overflow parking ground behind the depot building, on the boundary with the adjoining building. We found the other reason why underground tanks are preferred when that adjoining building (tyre and exhaust centre) caught fire, right in the middle of a fireman's strike. Luckily it is quite hard to set diesel on fire, and the part-time but highly professional retained firefighters from the neighbouring small country towns had arrived and put the blaze out before things got hot enough to ignite the diesel, and well before the Army turned up with their Green Goddess.

One thing you might like to add, since there is no overflow parking ground on your model, and nowhere to put one, which is to have the side street well supplied with middle-aged cars, or suggest that the recipient does that. The drivers have to park somewhere, since some will arrive before the first buses leave and others don't go home until the last ones are put to bed. Staff buses weren't common outside big cities.

[Booking Hall]

The majority of older depots, particularly where space is short, have underground fuel tankage. But  that's an excellent model of a diesel fuel tank, and I did manage a depot that had a tank just like it, except that ours was in the overflow parking ground behind the depot building, on the boundary with the adjoining building. We found the other reason why underground tanks are preferred when that adjoining building (tyre and exhaust centre) caught fire, right in the middle of a fireman's strike. Luckily it is quite hard to set diesel on fire, and the part-time but highly professional retained firefighters from the neighbouring small country towns had arrived and put the blaze out before things got hot enough to ignite the diesel, and well before the Army turned up with their Green Goddess.

One thing you might like to add, since there is no overflow parking ground on your model, and nowhere to put one, which is to have the side street well supplied with middle-aged cars, or suggest that the recipient does that. The drivers have to park somewhere, since some will arrive before the first buses leave and others don't go home until the last ones are put to bed. Staff buses weren't common outside big cities.

Thanks for your further thoughts and kind words Andy. Your mention of underground fuel tanks reminds me that when I was working, the organization I worked for bought a former Central Fire Station to refurbish as their headquarters offices. This involved building a conference extension at the rear. We were assured, by the former owners, that the underground fuel tank had been removed after the station was closed and converted into an Art Gallery. So when we found a large metal object in the ground whilst excavating for foundations we at first thought it may be a UXB (this was Salford), but after further (careful!!!) investigation it turned out to be the fuel tank which everyone assured us wasn't there! This delayed the project considerably whilst we employed specialists to empty, clean and certify it safe for removal. So there's a lot to be said for above ground tanks, at least you know they're there!! (Also, more interesting visually, from a modellers point of view).