Iken view - a oo gauge shelf layout

[jdsnape]

A few months ago, I decided to build my first layout (at least, first since I was a child!). I got our two boys all excited about it, found a (small) space and started buying bits for it. However - a house came up for sale in the village, and we decided to try and put things in motion to sell ours. It was agreed I could make a start on my original plan, but it was quickly decided that my rapidly assembled baseboards made the spare room look far too small. I was slightly disappointed, but realised that this was a good opportunity to make a small shelf-layout / diorama as a chance to practise techniques in advance of building a bigger layout if the house move goes ahead.

 

My inspiration is the goods-only station at Snape Maltings.  It's a beautiful place, and you may notice a link to my name :) I've been reading the excellent book "The Snape Branch" by Peter Paye, and found some interesting photos online:

 

 

 

Photo embedded from "Transport Treasury" - https://www.transporttreasury.com/p937405195/e37f455b1

 

Photo embedded from "Transport Treasury" - https://www.transporttreasury.com/p937405195/e3cda260d

 

Sadly, I don't have space to model the bridge!

 

it was an interesting site as there was no passenger station ever built. The line split into two, joining again at a waggon turntable just in front of the maltings entrance. There was therefore no run-around for the engine,  with wagons shunted by rope from the adjacent loop, horse or later on tractor.

 

The space I have is about 1.2m by 30cm - so there's obviously not room to do a faithful reconstruction. Nevertheless, I hope to practise my modelling in a way that perhaps indicates the original site - although I'm not sure there will be room for a J15! 

 

I built the baseboards and started laying out track to make sure the angles worked:

 

The maltings building is from Lasercutrailwaymodels and I believe was based on the maltings at Snape. At Snape the lines passed through a more ornate gateway, but there's not space for that so this will have to do!

 

This seemed to work with a small engine, and one or two trucks. I soldered dropper wires onto each track piece - possibly overkill for this but thought it would be good to practise. I drilled holes to allow for point motors to be fitted later - my plan is to experiment with some servos driven by an Arduino. I laid cork under the track and yard area and glued the track with copydex:

 

 

I knew there was a reason I kept those textbooks!

 

Under the baseboard (no photo yet) I ran two wires from a mains cable the length of the boards, and used my wire strippers to cut away a small piece of insulation next to each dropper before soldering it on. I need to go back and insulate that - I forgot to add heat shrink until after I had done all the soldering (every time!). 

 

I did make one small mistake with the soldering and accidentally used a metal fishplate on the turnout leading to the siding - as you can see in the picture above! As it's Peco electrofrog this caused a short when the point was thrown. I managed to bend the sides of the fishplate and pull it out, although I did scratch the rail slightly in the process which was a little annoying!

 

Now that is fixed, a small test loco I have runs up and down, although I did have to widen the flange spacing to get it to pass over the points. 

 

Next up will be painting the track (something I intended to do before glueing - but got too excited about getting it working!) and ballasting...

[jdsnape]

Oh, I also intended to include this from a map showing the track layout at the site. The small building to the south of the line adjacent to the road is the small goods shed, where agricultural/local traffic would be loaded. The building just to the north of the line (east of the S.P) was the station master's house, which had a small goods platform outside. You can see the two lines meeting at the wagon turntable just outside the maltings complex. All traffic from this point onwards was pulled by horse / tractor. I wanted a runaround really, and didn't quite have space for a turntable so replaced this with a point for this layout.

[NHY 581]

Nice project. 

 

Rob

[Bungus the Fogeyman]

This was my take on Snape Maltings from a few years ago. I imagined that it stayed open long enough for diesels to work up there (although the BTH type 1 was pressed into service as my shunter for the day failed..

 

Disgusting of Market Harborough

Edited April 23, 2023 by Bungus the Fogeyman
mis-spelling

[jdsnape]

On 23/04/2023 at 11:44, Bungus the Fogeyman said:

This was my take on Snape Maltings from a few years ago. I imagined that it stayed open long enough for diesels to work up there (although the BTH type 1 was pressed into service as my shunter for the day failed..

 

 

Thanks for the post and the photos - you really do get the feel that it's Snape!

 

A slight pause in work while I sort some other stuff, but hope to make some more progress next week.

[jdsnape]

Well, it's been a while! We had some time away visiting family that we'd not seen since pre-covid, then camping - neither of which conducive to making progress!

 

Nevertheless, all the track was laid, and with the eager assistance of my five year old we made a small embankment at the back of the layout - not prototypical for Snape, but I wanted to avoid it looking like a flat plank:

 

I think the back was also ballasted at this point - again, with some help making sure it wasn't on the sleepers! I found carefully dripping IPA alcohol over it then dropping diluted PVA with a pipette worked super well. 

 

To get the goods yard look I've added DAS air clay, which we flattened out and stippled with a brush: 

 

it was then painted with a thin coat of Tamiya acrylics - so far its had flat earth and light grey, and a dilute black wash for some weathering around the edges. Again in a departure from the prototype I've decided to have a small coal stage and shed in the bottom right hand corner, so have started weathering that.

 

 

I think I'm mostly happy with how that has turned out, although it feels a bit messy at the moment. I'm hoping that will improve as I start to grass some of the areas (e.g. the bottom bit of the picture currently in blue).

 

We've also had a visitor from the GNSR railway courtesy of eBay - some re-lettering to do at some point!

 

 

[jdsnape]

Couple of minor jobs last night - some puddles made by painting on the back of some cellophane packaging. Surrounded by very thin DAS clay, which hopefully should stop it looking too flat when it is grassed over:

 

I also started making some check rails for the road crossing, one fixed in place so far. The gap should probably be a little smaller but I didn’t file down the flat of the rail so that’s as close as I could get it:

[Suffolk Dave]

With the Maltings being just a short drive from me, I shall be following your layout development with interest. 😃

 

Keep up the good work!