Brackhampton Snow Hill - A relaunch

[rovex]

The relaunch

 

Rather like central government I am announcing the launch of my new layout – which most readers will soon realise is actually identical to my old layout (I did just say this was like a government announcement. My reason for this are twofold, firstly to bring together in one thread all future posts in relation to the layout and secondly to try an apply some pressure on myself to actually make some progress and finish something rather than going off on tangents and half finished projects. It won’t work but I can least set out with good intentions.

 

The idea

 

The big idea – and I only have big ideas – was to make a model that was intended in some small way to honour the glory that was after Paddington arguably one of the Great Western’s finest stations Birmingham Snow Hill (did I say it was a big idea). Branch lines pretty as they are have never held a great fascination for me and much as I love the countryside I have always been more fascinated with urban grot.

 

Like my previous layout (and I suspect like most of us with limited will power) it goes through spurts of productivity followed by rather longer periods of inactivity with a few backwards moves thrown in for good measure. So far no train has moved in anger and I must have been at this for well over five years.

 

My previous layout was almost ten years in the building and wasn’t anywhere near finished when I had to dismantle it because of a forced house move.

 

The original

 

The current Birmingham Snow Hill is a pale shadow of its former self. The original station was closed and demolished after slowly being allowed to rot for ten years. It was the third station on the original site and was rebuilt between 1910 and 1914 (or thereabouts) to cope with the increasing demand. It featured four mainline running tracks, four through platforms (which could each take two trains) and four bay platforms. Half the station was covered by an overall roof and the whole was an epitome of the Edwardian age of elegance.

 

The model

 

I want to make a representative model of the original, something that is large enough that it captures the sprawl of the original, including the double scissors crossings and yet would fit in the largest space that I could obtain. Because this would not be an exact replica I decided it wouldn’t be called Birmingham Snow Hill either. I settled on Brackhampton Snow Hill. For those not in the know Brackhampton is an industrial town in Middleshire made famous when Mrs McGillicuddy, who was travelling on the 4:50 from Paddington saw a murder take place on an adjacent train minutes before her train arrived in Brackhampton. Yes I am taking about the Agatha Christie novel, but we have to get our inspiration from somewhere.

 

First steps

 

A very large garden shed was purchased with a bonus I got from work and this gave me a space of about 24 ft by 14 ft.  It also meant that the long suffering better half didn’t have to put up with a house full of “my junk”.

 

With a space  acquired I could start planning.  Obviously I was going have to compromise. The length of the station was going to have to be reduced but I still wanted to have the scissors crossings and be able to have two trains on the through platforms. But these would be model express trains. That is I would not be running thirteen coach expresses. I might run some eight coach trains but most would be five coaches or thereabouts.

 

The width of the platforms was another sacrifice and many of the coach sidings also went. But finally, with the aid of Templot  I settled on a plan and printed this out and fitted it into the room and started building baseboards.

 

Track

 

 

At an early state I decided that I would have to use handbuilt track and I wanted to use finescale flexible track. Almost all the pointwork has been built by Hayfield of this parish, whom I can unreservedly recommend. There are still a couple of points that need building but otherwise almost all is now done. Track has had to be laid twice after an early plan to use spray adhesive foundered when the summer heat expanded all the track and forced a lot of the flexitrack to bow away from the baseboard.

 

I have reverted to more traditional methods and having lifted all the track and purchased more flexitrack it was subsequently pinned down instead. I also took the opportunity to do what I should have done the first time and solder drop wires to every piece of track. Electrical connectivity has always been a bug bear of my layouts with trains stalling in awkward places. This time I was not going to rely on fishplates to conduct current and every piece of track will be connected. I’m also using DCC control for the trains but have decided to use more traditional methods for point control. A lot of pm4 point motors are being purchased (whenever I see them cheap on eBay, or I’m visiting Kidderminster – I drop into the local model shop and clear them out). This does mean that I have a lot of peco point motors (which have never been used but were bought before I realised that handbuilt track needed locking point motors) to sell on.

 

The lines through platform ½ and the bays into 3 and 4 need to be finished and I hope to do this soon. This will also allow me to finish off the platforms. The other platforms on the west side of the station have now all been built but need painting and weathering.

 

No ballasting has happened and I don’t want to do this until I have wired the layout, however lying on my back trying to install point motors and solder little coloured wires is not an inviting task.

 

The fiddle yard

 

One area that has caused me considerable headaches and should really have been settled before anything else is the question of storage. In order to run anything like a representative railway I need space for expresses, both major and cross country services, local services (Birmingham had a large commuter traffic, even with Moor Street taking much of the traffic from the South) and local and national freight movements (Snow Hill didn’t really handle freight – well I don’t think it did by the time I’m modelling – although parcel traffic remained important – but freight movements passed though the station either passing between the various depots within Birmingham or the West Midlands and from further a field).

 

Although trains could double up and at any one time some would be in the station I was going to need a lot of storage. I toyed with the idea of the standard fan of sidings or double decking the tracks but soon discounted this as providing insufficient space.

 

Then I turned to cassette storage but the cost of aluminium angle strip was off-putting and of manhandling a rack containing eight coaches without dropping it. So I started building a traverser system with sidings off to increase capacity. This meant dismantling half the baseboards on the opposite side of the shed. The plan was to have an eight foot traverser and whilst this board was built I stalled before I had settled on any system for actually supporting the traverser and ensuring smooth operation.

 

I think I have decided that my carpentry skills simply are not up to that particular job. At the moment I am swinging back to some kind of rack storage. The long shed wall could hold a substantial shelving system and a foot wide shelf could be used to hold the racks when feeding the trains into layout. It’s not going to be ideal but I will have to see if it works for me. And who knows once I’m halfway through I might have changed my mind again!

 

Signalling

 

One thing I wanted with this model, as opposed to my previous attempts was to have working signals. In actual fact only those signals at the North end will actually work. Why only the North end, well the South end is hidden under the overall roof and trying to feed the various mechanisms up to them is beyond me especially as it would mean passing many of them through the various roof supports for the overall roof.

 

Most of the signals have been built, but once again when it came to fitting the moving parts my enthusiasm has waned and this still needs to be done (you’ll see a pattern developing here).

 

3D printing

 

One of the biggest time wasters for me has been the discovery of 3D printing. I don’t mean this in a negative sense, I think it’s a boon to railway modelling, however it simply eats time, time which I should really be spending on wiring the layout (for example).

 

Where it is brilliant though is in the creation of lots of repetitive items; particularly where those items all have to be identical.

 

 

So far I have designed the platform canopies which cover the extensive platforms which are not covered by the overall roof – I just need to be able to afford to get them printed. This also means that I must have a score of ratio platform kits to sell off. The platforms were originally designed at 5cm wide to fit the Ratio kits. Having decided to 3D print I’ve kept the width and I think, although I know this is narrow, it should work.

 

 

I’ve also designed all the platform buildings to be 3D printed, but having recently ordered a complete set to build one of the smallest ones I wasn’t impressed with the print quality. Which goes to show how variable it can be. I had bought one off prints to check quality and these were acceptable but the quality was much poorer when I bought in bulk – Ho hum. I wonder whether the brick pieces might be better laser printed – but I will NOT allow myself to be diverted I must get some trains moving.

 

 

I am however quite pleased with the curtain wall that had printed at the same time and I promise to post some pictures soon.

 

The environs

 

As well as building the station there are a couple of buildings which I also want to represent. These are:

 

1. St Chad’s cathedral – my model will be much closer to the station then the actual St Chads and will be based on two Kibri Romanesque churches bashed into one. A start has been made on this and again I will post pictures. It should be quite impressive
2. Taylor and Challens – not the whole factory but the building that overlooked the turntable and water tower and is such an unmistakeable feature in so many pictures of Snow Hill.
3. The Great Western Arcade – This was built over the cutting that originally ran though the centre of Birmingham when the station was first built. Very few pictures exist of the original façade on Colmore Row and this end of the arcade was a victim of enemy action in the war. However using an old Victorian architects sketch I have produced a 3D print of the façade.
4. The canal – Birmingham is of course famous for its canals and the station was extended over one. The other thing you see a lot of in Birmingham is buildings built over canals so that on certain streets you wouldn’t now walking down it that you’ve just walked over a canal. The Gas Street basin is one example. At Snow Hill is another.

 

The rest of Brackhampton will bear no relation to Birmingham and will be made up from buildings salvaged from my previous layout, kit bashed buildings and scratchbuilt and 3D printed facades.

 

If anyone wants to do more digging there are quite a few blog and other posts littering the site and I'll try to add links to the better ones when I'm not gardening,decorating or finding other excuses to avoid modelling.

 

Right end of the press release – next step get that track wired.

[Danemouth]

Will watch this layout develop with interest Rovex.

 

I really like terminal stations and with a shed that large you've the space for something special,

 

Regards,

 

Dave

[rovex]

Right. here are some photos of the start of construction on St Chads. The Roman Cathaloc Cathedral which wil form a partial backdrop to Brackhampton and is partially inspired by the church of the same name in the environs of the actual Birmingham Snow Hill.

 

The model utilises two Kibri kits. The original kit has the towers at the wrong end, so first task - move them from the back to the front. I can't claim any originality for this it has been done on here before. However my model will extended as well.

 

So firstly alterations to the base plate

 

 

The apse is cut off the rear of one of the base plates, this will now form the front of my church

 

The first few walls go up, and alterations are made to the towers to remove the vestry from one of the towers.

 

 

 

Now two shots showing how the nave has been lengthened

 

 

 

The gables from the tops of the towers have also been removed. The spires that come with the kit are not being used. My plan is to 3D print some taller slender towers which will be a better match with the prototype

 

 

 

 

Here we see the completed rear view of the church and the chancel added. This side will be against the backscene.

 

Final shot for this post. This side wil face the railway. The chancel/apse from the second kit will be added to this side by the tower, again to match the prototype. The plan is also to add offices and rooms to this side made from kitbashed parts of the kit.  I'm intending to raise the church slightly so that it doesn't disappear behind the viaduct the station itself sits on.

 

 

 

[rovex]

Further progress now on the layout side of the church.

 

These photos show the apsidal structure attached to the tower and a related office building.

 

As you can see I've built up the base of the church by 45 mm. There will be a long flight of steps up to the front entrance of the church and the land will then fall away along the side elevation. There will be a well on this side with railings giving access to an undercroft, boiler room and church offices to be constructed mainly from off cuts of the kit.

 

 

Here is a photo showing the approximate position of the church in relation to the tracks. Once the spires are added, it should be quite imposing. I'm thinking some houses/shops close up to the embankment between the church and station, and perhaps some buildings in very low relief behind.

 

 

Finally for this post, as promised some time ago here is a shot of the rear curtain wall which will support the overall roof. All 3D printed. Would have come out better if I'd sprayed it beforehand but its not secured yet so plenty of time to do that.

 

[Jamiel]

Lovely to see a new big urban layout in progress on RMweb.

 

I love your kit bashing of German kits to Anglicise them, I will follow this with interest and for inspiration as well.

Jamie