Blog- Somewhere in Germany - The beginnings of Bad Horn

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It had started as a sector era Southern Region layout. Inspired by Weymouth, I'd got as far as having laid the track and put platforms in. I was plugging away at building a small fleet of EMUs, and ordered myself some Peco insulator chairs and conductor rail from my local model shop.

 

I think it was two months into the wait for the chairs that something clicked in my mind. Tidying my playroom railway room I was sorting through my German outline models, seperating the mid 1980s (Epoch IV) models from the late 1990s ones (Epoch V), the realisation hit that I had enough of an Epoch IV collection to operate a layout. "Blow it" I thought, and I think I even said words to that effect out loud. For some reason I'd pinned the track down on the layout, and with the aid of some wire cutters I was soon pulling them out. The copperclad sleepers I used at the baseboard join needed a little chisel work, but it wasn't many minutes before I had myself a new blank canvas. Well, plywood top. 8' x 1' of it.

 

After a little playing with the track (Piko A Track, code 100 but with a narrow rail profile), I found a nice plan. Basically a terminus with a run round and two sidings and a small headshunt. One siding was turned into a bay platform, and the other was just loooooooong. Throwing caution to the wind, I drilled a few holes for the point actuating rods, and secured the track. I even reused most of the original pins- good sturdy Hornby ones!

 

Deciding to get on with things before disillusionment set in (and also making use of some fine weather- I like doing messy jobs outside), I cut some platforms out of 9mm MDF, and cracked straight on with ballasting. I'd never used Scenic Textures ballast before, and I doubt I will again- it smells like cat litter and even with a very thorough wetting still clumped when dilute PVA was applied. Once this had set enough, I made some edging stones for the platform from card- card from Tillig flexi track boxes. As an experiment I tried using fine ballast as a platform surface. It clumped. Once it dried, I chiselled it off and tried a similar technique to applying grass. I painted PVA onto the platform, then sprinkled the ballast on. Success! A smoother surface.

 

I haven't done much scratchbuilding before, so I decided to have a shot with the station building. Not that it's rocket science, I'm just a bit ham fisted at times. So far it looks OK, but I now need to add details such as guttering, which leaves plenty of scope to make a farce of matters.

 

Anyway, here's the early stages out in the garden...

 

 

 

There's a representative sample of stock there, showing the layout at its busiest. A 212 works push-pull with Silberlings on a peak time service, while the off-peak provision of a BR798 Schienenbus with 998 trailer is tucked in the bay. A 218 is overprovision for the pick up freight, normally a 360 or similar would handle this.

 

I made the backscenes such that the layout can box up for transport, which will be completed with the addition of plywood ends screwing on into T nuts in the baseboard ends. Hopefully this will be secure for lugging around.

 

 

 

 

And that was the beginnings. Having got this far, I promptly b***ered off on holiday for a month, and came back to find a new, shiny RMWeb...

 

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