bigwordsmith

Hi David - more work on Waverley and a couple of pics as well! http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/73196-waverley-shed-somewhere-in-edinburgh/?p=1162810

So more on the scenic front, as well as some wiring sort outs! Gaugemaster provided me with the final pieces needed for the North Wall in the form of Faller DekkorPlatte, but the tunnel mouths for the West end bridge were not so easy - the problem is that I had a two track, a three track, then another two track opening that lead through to the 'new' shed, which of course isn't actually modelled! That's 60147 North Eastern just easing off the turntable - a recent acquisition from the good folk at Bachmann The solution came from shaping a piece of plain wall and cutting the heck out of Faller tunnel mouths which look distinctly continental, until you butcher them! Thank heavens for a sharp scalpel and the hot wire - much left to do including both the capping stones and the arch stones in the custom made arch, but the effect of the bridge coming down a hill is looking pleasing already. Of course having posed the RT bus on the bridge I then realised that I'll need to swap my collection of varied EFE diecasts for some Edinburgh Corporation examples! Looking East there's not much change, but finishing the walling off will make a difference

Hi David, The positioning of both was purely coincidental, but probably prototypical - both needed width and there was only 20" on the original layout, so they went to opposite ends! WIth this one I've added about a foot of width as well as another 2 feet of length overall due to its new home so it has space to breathe. The theory behind the walling is to have a high back scene - like the views you see at St. Margaret's of the 'closies' over the turntable. I've had a go at reproducing one of these using EZ draw and uploaded a screen grab - problem is that it's two dimensional, unlike the Faller walling! I'ma bit reluctant to try and build one of those from scratch! ATB Peter

David I've been thinking about that and I'm tempted to take lessons from you! Another thought I had was to use this as the 'old shed' that is in the process of being demolished and leabe it with just a girder roof structure! Any suggestions? ATB Peter

David that just looks so good - here was I rushing to share that I've finally made some progress on Waverley and once again you show how it should be done. Anyway of you want alaugh at what an amateur model looks like pop over to http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/73196-waverley-shed-somewhere-in-edinburgh/?p=1148305 and give me your thoughts ATB Peter

Just saw those pics large size on here for the first time - actually feeling quite pleased with the results so far!

Masses of progress in the last few weeks! So I managed to get some serious tracklaying, wiring and general moving on stuff going on and of course took loads of photos, but actually on reflection they;re all pretty boring... So just to say that everything now works - I can store over 44 locos on the various lines - all analog and all using trusty H&M multipack selector switches. So now it's on to the scenery build. Much emptying of old boxes of 'stuff' revealed, well, not a lot that was much use actually! So trip to Gaugemaster where I bought aload of WIlls walls and windows, and some Faller DekkorPlatte stone walls - much cheaper than NOCH and I've started laying stuff out on the board as you can see from the pics. Many thanks to Brian at Morris Models near Worthing who very kindly allowed me to offload my excess point motors and other assorted peco items in PX for a rather nice looking A3. IN fact I was so grateful I then splashed out a a new V@ as you can see from the pics below. The brick shed is under construction and I'm playing with the Faller panels to see what I can come up with int he way of an overbridge to hide the main shed which isn't actually here, but will be 'behind the back scenes.'

David that is so ingenious! Looks very good! Peter

Great Pics David - whose railway are you using?

Thanks Jamie I've been tracklaying on the stretched section and also built the traverser so will add some pics of that over the weekend.

David those shots are stunning - do you ave an outdoor 00 that you've not told us about?

I've got a handful of the Bachmann A2s and A1s and I've noticed that if you couple the tender up closely they struggle to get round anything tighter than 3' They also tend to fall off anything less than perfectly laid track!

Nice - Dirty Deltic! DId it ever get up there? I know it trialled on the Race Track, but thought it never got North of the Border - but then who cares? -If it looks good run it (He says as he plans to run a 'Western' into Waverley Shed!) Didn't know there was an A2 called Waverley - was she a 64b loco?

Bit of progress this weekend. The idea is so that I can run an engine off shed behind a scenic break and onto a traverser which allows me to pull it out from behind the scenery and remove it from the line - all theoretically out of sight. Brian at Morris Models suggested using Peco Loco Lifts so I've bought a couple of those and laid out some tracks for parking the engines - OK so it's 'Hand of God' time to move them but I can't see an option. The traverser base is a piece of ply running on kitchen drawer runners - it's going to take some engineering to get it right, but I suspect that may not happen too soon as my beloved needs help in the garden! Hey Ho. SO a couple of pics... The traverser base And the tracks below the scenic deck for parking locos off scene being laid - note the base of the Loco Lift being used to ensure decent separation, and a small drop of Speckled Hen to ease the proceedings of a Sunday evening!

THanks David I'll check them out

David you've got good eyesight! It is indeed a Clan. I had to blow the original up to very very big to make sure myself! Tx for the recommendation about the Haymarket books - I've been reading Life on and off the footplate and thoroughly enjoyed it - what was the title of the other one? Tx Rob - in fairness this is over two year's work to get where it is!

Wow - you guys do things BIIIIG! Fantastic modelling!

Author's note January 2020 When I started this thread there was no inkling of building anything bigger than a 10'x1'6' shed layout to the side of my desk in the study, but an unexpected move three years later resulted in 12x3' becoming available, only to be followed 2 years on by the building of a 37'x11' loft! So from a small engine shed the thread morphs around page 6 into a project to bring back to life the Waverley Route in its late 1950's last days of glory. This project lasted just four years before another move led to the dismantling of the whole railway and a year in storage, before finally arriving in its new home - a loft over the garage of 9'6' width by 20' length. A more manageable size, one of the discoveries when we had 37' to play with was that eyesight didn't really give much of a view of trains at the other end of the room, so signalling and operations were impractical, but a new challenge, especially as I'd built up the stock for a monster railway! So take your pick about where to start, the latest part of the saga kicks off around page 19, and thank you for reading. Peter The story so far... Shortly after my father passed away a few years ago, leaving me his lovingly built n-gauge line based on a fictitious Isle of Arran railway, I decided that model railways didn't have to mean mainline tail chasing, despite the fact that the last layout he and I had worked on together ( some 30+ years ago) had allowed us to run a full length 'Queen of the Scots', 20 truck coal trains and so on, and look right. Full marks to him, having never actually had a model railway of his own, after my mother died, and he was left alone at the age of 85, he decided it's never too late to start, so built himself a great little railway on a long shelf above the desk in his study. Many happy hours, and a good excuse to go visit him for a Saturday afternoon! Despite not having had a layout for close to 20 years, my collection continued to grow, and after my father passed away I began to think maybe I should look at 'N'. However, having witnessed the problems of ageing eyesight when trying to lay 'N' gauge track (both his and mine) I decided to stick to 00 and built a small tail chaser in the spare room. A year later we decided to remodel the house and the tail chaser got dismantled, but two years further down the line an article in one of the Railway Mags about someone modelling a shed led me to decide that this offered the perfect compromise and the idea of Waverley Shed was born. Over the years I've acquired a fair few locos. Back in the days of moulded handrails and having a job that took me round the country, I used to pick up locos secondhand that weren't native to the retailer, such as Hornby A3s for a few quid at Froude & Hext in Swindon, then do them up with proper handrails, buffer detail, scale wheels and a half decent paint job, and sell them for twice what they cost me to other model shops where the demand was higher! Today, with the excellent quality coming out from the manufacturers there's nothing like as much to do. Also they run so much better, that it's practical to have a layout where the maximum scale speed is 15mph! Sitting musing on the way the world works, I realised that there was just enough space down the side of my desk in my last study, using a large cupboard as the base, giving me 10'6"x 20" narrowing to 12" to play with. Bingo! Then, last summer, having got it all wired up, but not much scenery, we decided to move, Waverley went into store and we duly moved at the end of August. Fast forward to this April, and after discussing all sorts of daft ideas involving sheds, extensions, and even digging out the ground under the deck at the back of the house, my beloved offered me the front bedroom ( i.e. the one that no-one will ever stay in, and is currently a store room). Waverley duly got dug out of storage and the first problem immediately became obvious - it didn't have a leg to stand on! After experimenting with various unsuccessful (i.e. wobbly) solutions using 2x2, a visit to the local model railway club open day at Horsham threw up the idea of trestles. Much drawing of ideas ensued, a fair bit of 2x1 got chopped and fixed together, but none of the solutions worked - at least not if having a level and stable baseboard mattered! Then by chance a google search for ready made trestles popped up not one, but four IKEA adjustable trestles being sold on eBay - the problem was the chap selling them had put them in two auctions of a pair each! Placing what can only be described as a pre-emptive bid for both sets, they were duly won - the first pair for £25, the second for £16 - Go figure, but still a whole lot less than the full £35.00 each that new ones would cost. It turned out the seller was a Globemaster pilot from Swindon, but as it happened I was visiting Bristol that week, so at the crack of dawn one morning we met in a garden centre by the M4, and the deal was done. Breakfast at the garden centre was pretty good too, and on a special price - full fry up with coffee & toast for £3.95 - Bonus! So back home, trestles assembled, and Waverley was once again stable. Just a bit smaller all round that its new home - 11'6" x 13' Now you might be thinking with all that space available, stuff Waverley shed - why not do the station? Here the challenges of being middle-aged etc. come into play. I don't mean creaky joints and being unable to sit down without going 'Aaaaah' but 'Stuff'. Specifically stuff that we may need from time to time, like garden cushions, spare bits of furniture, and the inevitable bulk purchases that always ensue from a trip to Costco. Looking around the room, it is tempting to ask 'just how many garden cushions does one couple really need?' Either way the answer is half a room full, at least in winter, so Waverley is confined to one wall, giving around 11'6" x, let's say 3' The first pic is the only one I took of it in its original setting. The other two pics show the boards in their new home - you can see the added on bits as they are in fresh cork underlay at the front. To get better access for wiring and soldering, the deck has been hinged onto the four trestles and plywood decks have been made up to go between them, giving the whole thing a touch of rigidity, as well as useful space for putting things on beneath the running scene. The theory behind adding width is that it allows me to add some scenery, and I've got a couple of sneaky ideas for getting some operational bits going, one of which involves a traverser allowing locos to disappear as they go 'off shed' and be removed from the layout for replacement by others. The reason for calling it Waverley Shed is that I don't have the width to do justice to either St. Margaret's or Haymarket, but as I was born in Edinburgh and brought up with a strong Gresley and Peppercorn influence from my father - our house actually backed onto the ECML at Joppa - I wanted to depict something about my childhood home. I make no apologies for the carpentry as it's all been added on using scrap wood from the new summerhouse that somehow managed to sneak in to the spot where my beloved had originally indicated we could put a model railway shed when we first looked at the new house! More posts will follow,but with a busy job and a large garden they will be sporadic!

Thanks David Just finished the first draft of the story of Waverley Shed after a good afternoon making progress, which also included getting the iphone into camera mode! I've started a new thread at http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/73196-waverley-shed-somewhere-in-edinburgh/ ATB Peter

The story so far... Shortly after my father passed away a few years ago, leaving me his lovingly built n-gauge line based on a fictitious Isle of Arran railway, I decided that model railways didn't have to mean mainline tail chasing, despite the fact that the last layout he and I had worked on together ( some 30+ years ago) had allowed us to run a full length 'Queen of the Scots', 20 truck coal trains and so on, and look right. Full marks to him, having never actually had a model railway of his own, after my mother died, and he was left alone at the age of 85, he decided it's never too late to start, so built himself a great little railway on a long shelf above the desk in his study. Many happy hours, and a good excuse to go visit him for a Saturday afternoon! Despite not having had a layout for close to 20 years, my collection continued to grow, and after my father passed away I began to think maybe I should look at 'N'. However, having witnessed the problems of ageing eyesight when trying to lay 'N' gauge track (both his and mine) I decided to stick to 00 and built a small tail chaser in the spare room. A year later we decided to remodel the house and the tail chaser got dismantled, but two years further down the line an article in one of the Railway Mags about someone modelling a shed led me to decide that this offered the perfect compromise and the idea of Waverley Shed was born. Over the years I've acquired a fair few locos. Back in the days of moulded handrails and having a job that took me round the country, I used to pick up locos secondhand that weren't native to the retailer, such as Hornby A3s for a few quid at Froude & Hext in Swindon, then do them up with proper handrails, buffer detail, scale wheels and a half decent paint job, and sell them for twice what they cost me to other model shops where the demand was higher! Now with the excellent quality coming out from the manufacturers there's nothing like as much to do. Also they run so much better, that it's practical to have a layout where the maximum scale speed is 15mph! Sitting musing on the way the world works, I realised that there was just enough space down the side of my desk in my last study, using a large cupboard as the base, giving me 10'6"x 20" narrowing to 12" to play with. Bingo! Then, last summer, having got it all wired up, but not much scenery, we decided to move, Waverley went into store and we duly moved at the end of August. Fast forward to this April, and after discussing all sorts of daft ideas involving sheds, extensions, and even digging out the ground under the deck at the back of the house, my beloved offered me the front bedroom ( i.e. the one that no-one will ever stay in, and is currently a store room). Waverley duly got dug out of storage and the first problem immediately became obvious - it didn't have a leg to stand on! After experimenting with various unsuccessful (i.e. wobbly) solutions using 2x2, a visit to the local model railway club open day at Horsham threw up the idea of trestles. Much drawing of ideas ensued, a fair bit of 2x1 got chopped and fixed together, but none of the solutions worked - at least not if having a level and stable baseboard mattered! Then by chance a google search for ready made trestles popped up not one, but four IKEA adjustable trestles being sold on eBay - the problem was the chap selling them had put them in two auctions of a pair each! Placing what can only be described as a pre-emptive bid for both sets, they were duly won - the first pair for £25, the second for £16 - Go figure, but still a whole lot less than the full £35.00 each that new ones would cost. It turned out the seller was a Globemaster pilot from Swindon, but as it happened I was visiting Bristol that week, so at the crack of dawn one morning we met in a garden centre by the M4, and the deal was done. Breakfast at the garden centre was pretty good too, and on a special price - full fry up with coffee & toast for £3.95 - Bonus! So back home, trestles assembled, and Waverley was once again stable. Just a bit smaller all round that its new home - 11'6" x 13' Now you might be thinking with all that space available, stuff Waverley shed - why not do the station? Here the challenges of being middle-aged etc. come into play. I don't mean creaky joints and being unable to sit down without going 'Aaaaah' but 'Stuff'. Specifically stuff that we may need from time to time, like garden cushions, spare bits of furniture, and the inevitable bulk purchases that always ensue from a trip to Costco. Looking around the room, it is tempting to ask 'just how many garden cushions does one couple really need?' Either way the answer is half a room full, at least in winter, so Waverley is confined to one wall, giving around 11'6" x, let's say 3' The first pic is the only one I took of it in its original setting. The other two pics show the boards in their new home - you can see the added on bits as they are in fresh cork underlay at the front. To get better access for wiring and soldering, the deck has been hinged onto the four trestles and plywood decks have been made up to go between them, giving the whole thing a touch of rigidity, as well as useful space for putting things on beneath the running scene. The theory behind adding width is that it allows me to add some scenery, and I've got a couple of sneaky ideas for getting some operational bits going, one of which involves a traverser allowing locos to disappear as they go 'off shed' and be removed from the layout for replacement by others. The reason for calling it Waverley Shed is that I don't have the width to do justice to either St. Margaret's or Haymarket, but as I was born in Edinburgh and brought up with a strong Gresley and Peppercorn influence from my father - our house actually backed onto the ECML at Joppa - I wanted to depict something about my childhood home. I make no apologies for the carpentry as it's all been added on using scrap wood from the new summerhouse that somehow managed to sneak in to the spot where my beloved had originally indicated we could put a model railway shed when we first looked at the new house! More posts will follow,but with a busy job and a large garden they will be sporadic!

IF Pepper steals anything it soon comes back - totally chewed! Can anyone remind me how to upload pics?

I have a lovely little Lhasa Apso who enjoys sitting on my lap while I'm playing trains watching them crawl from side to side - poor baby's just had a knee operation so is feeling abit sorry for herself, but when Waverley Shed was in my last study she used to come in, look up at the line and woof to let me know she wanted to get up and see what the trains were up to. My wife thinks we're both mad! David - I didn't realise you're also a Sussex man, perhaps when you've finished it you might show this wonderful work in the flesh?

Hi David - still at just off baseboard stage I'm afraid! I started the layout at our last house where I had to fit it in beside my desk in a 10' x 20" space, tapering down to 12" so I could get alongside my desk. We moved last August and I've now got one wall of the spare room so have just got a project off the ground to widen the baseboards by adding scenery at both back and front and making it a straight line, as well as widening out to 11'6" Ive shortened it by 1' at the West end f the board and am trying to build a traverser using some form ( TBC) of boxes for the locos to be able to run into when apparently moving off the yard to station duties. The idea then is that I can open the traverser drawer, lift out the box and swap it for another thereby sending a fresh loco back into the depot to be fed watered and turned. The layout is not very prototypical, so I'm giving some thought to a bit of redesign to make it more realistic - as with all Model projects it's about 10% doing, 90% thinking! I've only got one pic of the layout in its original condition - I can't see an 'upload' button here so I've popped it onto my website at http://www.marketingdoctors.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/Loco-shed.jpg ATB Peter

Just found this thread and all I can say is WOW! I started a freelance shed a while ago which has relocated as we moved house, but seeing the quality of your work makes me ashamed! One thing I am pleased with is the Heljan turntable I bought -I've not tried to anglicise it (yet!) but it is very accurate I'm trying to capture the spirit of an LNER Scottish Top Shed, so am thinking of calling it 'Waverley Shed' Please keep the pics rolling they are seriously inspirational. Silver links video has got me thinking seriously about DCC & sound Who said this is a cheap hobby!

Interesting model - what did you use? Kit or Hornby bash?