Brassey Posted May 23, 2012 Share Posted May 23, 2012 Having been a passive observer for some while I thought I'd better dive in with a blog of my own. My aim is a layout of Church Stretton in the pre-grouping period. Being on the S&H Joint line I have the excuse of running both L&NWR and GWR trains. Though the planning has been on-going for decades, I have recently acquired copies of the Working Timetable, Passenger Timetable and Marshalling Circular for my chosen period (1912). I am now occupied analysing this and am up to 120 train movements through the station. The objective of this exercise is to have some discipline in producing stock from my stockpile of unmade kits in order that I might start to run to a timetable when I get that far. I would welcome comments from anyone with similar interests or advice. Peter Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jol Wilkinson Posted May 23, 2012 Share Posted May 23, 2012 I shall follow this with real interest.You may even prompt me to start my own layout topic! Good luck with it. Jol Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Gold beast66606 Posted May 23, 2012 RMweb Gold Share Posted May 23, 2012 Hi Peter, I'll be interested in seeing this as you post photos and updates. I have the sectional appendices for the area, I also have some LNWR weekly notices which cover special trains, but I'm not sure if Church Stretton is in there, they may be Northern Section only. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
jjnewitt Posted May 23, 2012 Share Posted May 23, 2012 Hi Peter. I shall look forward to seeing how it progresses. The North and West is such a wonderful line. It helps that it runs through some of the most beautiful countryside to be found in all this island! I grew up in the Marches and know the line and Church Stretton well though somewhat after 1912! It's good to see another layout of a North and West prototype, especially in P4, and it will be particularly nice to see a part of the Shrewsbury and Hereford being modelled. Good luck. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dmudriver Posted May 23, 2012 Share Posted May 23, 2012 Hi Peter. I look forward to following this one as I've always been interested in the LNWR and particularly working with the GWR. I had a decent collection of LNWR stock in 0 gauge, but sold it all to finance my blue diesel layout, so I will be very interested to see what you do with this. Enjoy the process! Keep updating!! Rod Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Gold Donw Posted May 23, 2012 RMweb Gold Share Posted May 23, 2012 We lived for a while at Bayston Hill. I used to walk across the field from our house (the field was actually part of an old British camp) with the dogs and watch the trains loading from the quarry there. It was 47s by then. Mind you I heard a steam train one day but it had gone by the time I reached the one window that overlooked the line. It was George V ( I think on the first steam run). Sorry no extra info on 1912 on that line. I model a similar period but on the Welsh coast with Cambrain and GW. Don Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Gold beast66606 Posted May 23, 2012 RMweb Gold Share Posted May 23, 2012 Reading the January 1917 appendix it has some interesting information about the ground frame and it's working, which also impacts the goods yard and it's working. Let me know if this is of interest. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brassey Posted April 24, 2013 Author Share Posted April 24, 2013 I guess an update is long overdue so here is the current status on the layout. My research showed that most of the express train formations on the line in pre-grouping days were around 10 coaches long, so I would have needed a space at least 25' long to accommodate an oval with sufficient fiddle yard space to make up these trains. As I have not got that amount of space available, my attention shifted to Berrington and Eye further down the line towards Hereford. This featured a very similar yet more compact layout to Church Stretton and it was also conveniently situated on a curve. I worked out that I could fit the plan into roughly 12' x 10' which could fit in the loft and other rooms in the house if liberated of furniture! Using Templot, I plotted a transition curve for the main line through the station which worked out at 3.2m long within the space I have. Again using the feature in Templot, I curved an OS map from the early 1900's around this curve and surprisingly the whole station area fitted to scale. That was on the basis that I chose not to model part of the down platform which carries on under the road bridge that crosses over the track and also acted as a footbridge between the platforms when the station was in use (the same as with the original Church Stretton station). I then managed to produce a full scale image of the track diagram from Templot superimposed over the OS map showing the station building and other trackside features. I had a number of problems getting this accurately to scale but once cracked and much fiddling with various versions of Acrobat, I got to print out the whole layout on A3 sheets. Attached is an image showing these sheets laid out on the living room floor which probably explains this better. Excuse the dog's bed in the corner! The battens show where the baseboard joints would be. The next stage is to cut ply baseboard tops to these shape as a start on finally constructing the baseboards. I'll probably start a new topic with the correct station name next time I post. Peter Edited to attach image! Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Gold martin_wynne Posted April 24, 2013 RMweb Gold Share Posted April 24, 2013 Hi Peter, Looking good. Can you say why you needed Acrobat to print it? Templot can print out your track plan on A3 sheets including the OS map background. Good to see the image wrapping function being used. I have recently written a tutorial about that, for anyone wanting to try it: http://templot.com/companion/index.html?wrap_picture_shape_to_curve.htm regards, Martin. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brassey Posted April 24, 2013 Author Share Posted April 24, 2013 Hi Martin I found that within Templot I could only print areas of the OS map background that had actual trackwork on the sheets and omitted areas without any track. I also needed the full area to draw the baseboard edges which I did in Photoshop and then exported to Acrobat. You can probably do this all in Templot too though! The image wrapping feature is amazing and far surpassed all my previous efforts to do this in Photoshop. I read about that feature on this forum too; without it I doubt that I could have gone ahead with this layout. You may recall from my other posts that I have successfully formatted the plain trackwork to LNWR specs too again thanks to your help. Cheers Peter Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Gold martin_wynne Posted April 24, 2013 RMweb Gold Share Posted April 24, 2013 I found that within Templot I could only print areas of the OS map background that had actual trackwork on the sheets and omitted areas without any track. Hi Peter, Yes, Templot omits any empty pages, otherwise with some roundy-roundy track plans you could accidentally start printing dozens of blank pages across the middle. Templot regards any page without any track on it as empty. So the solution is easy -- you can trick Templot into printing extra pages by placing a dummy template on each one. It need be only 1mm long, and if you make it a centre-line-only template it will be almost invisible on the print. To place them you can see the page outlines shown on the trackpad by clicking the trackpad > page outlines menu items. I will have a look at amending this so that the presence of a background image also causes the page to print, even if there is no track on it. Thanks for reminding me about this. regards, Martin. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brassey Posted April 24, 2013 Author Share Posted April 24, 2013 I will have a look at amending this so that the presence of a background image also causes the page to print, even if there is no track on it. Thanks for reminding me about this. Martin, I would not be too hasty in amending this as I found the existing facilty quite useful. When I put the trackplan into photoshop/acrobat I indeed ended up with lots of blank sheets as this is essentially a round layout. As I have the full version of Acrobat, I managed to delete them before printing luckily. The other issue is that image files can have anything down to a single pixel in them so, although the naked eye may not see it, the computer can and it may print these very small areas. There is also the issue of white version transparent areas. Just food for thought. Peter Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
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