Boco_D1

Inspiring work James, I really must have a go and follow in your footsteps at creating something a little more unique, although think I need a bit of practise to reach your level of superb weathering.

In fact it’s still in the rule book for the signalman to stop and ask the driver during times of failure, usually when you’ve lost your TD or TRUST (although these days it’s better to phone than try and shout the conversation signalling centres tend to be a bit further from location than the traditional box)

Thanks Chris, i’ve Actually finished the model now just need to get round to putting some pictures on here.

Excellent news on your progress, it’s great to see this layout moving forward.

But he’d have to crowd fund it first.

It’s based on his early 1990s figure

When it comes to the injured in a car accident callers I try to keep them on the line for as long as possible with some elloborate story, my particular favourite was telling the guy that I had slightly overloaded the car with some large dogs. On that occasion I got as far telling the concerned caller that my registration number was Papa India 5 5 Oscar Foxtrot Foxtrot. Took him a minute or two but he got the message.

I think it’s just been over a month since I last updated this, Mostly because I was under the impression I hadn’t done much. However looking back I’ve realised that I have actually done a fair bit. The model is now all glued together into one peice including the roof, the roofs have themselves been weathered to represent a more weather worn covering with pencil lines to represent the overlapping over the roofing material. And to make sure the model doesn’t break up into its original modules it now sits on a base representing the surrounding pavement, made from grey card with slaters pavement sheet. I have added drain drain pipes and the fenced off area that will eventually contain a few cabinets. I have also begun weathering the building, I wasn’t happy with the door to the S&T mess and after finding a photo of it realised it need a light above it and that it was a bit too tall and the wrong colour. I difficult job to rectify when the whole things is glued in and so in the end I feed some fibre optic wire above the door and built a box to represent the light, it’s not great but it does work. The door itself was lowered with a new strip of card to make a new frame above and the window partially filled in with filler. I've also weathered the path and added details such as this bike and... ... Signalman S having a smoke, this a Dapol figure from the workmen set who originally has his arm outstretched pointing.I chopped the arm off repositioned it and painted the pointed finger white to represent a cigarette. There’s plenty of detail work still to do and I have still to work out what the mystery white box between the two buildings was but otherwise this project edges ever closer to completion.

That model room is looking great, you may already know this but a bit of decorator’s advice when you come to paint your room put on a mist coat of diluted emulsion first, this will allow the plaster to absorb the moisture so your top coat doesn’t dry too fast and then starts to peel off.

The new layout looks great have you considered adapting the two layouts so they could be joined together to make a larger layout?

Things are starting to square up on this build and I’m not too far from completion. The boiler house now has the louvre vent on the roof, the doors have been replaced and I have added a chimney, although I have seen some updated photos on the Swindon panel preservation site since the box has been demolished and I can’t see where the chimney was connected which suggests it may have been on the opposite building, but google earth suggests the otherwise, so a little more digging is needed and it may need to be repositioned. And I have completed the task I had been dreading and surprisingly it wasn’t as bad as I thought. The fire escape was constructed with plasticard and various evergreen and plastruct parts. And I’ve added a coach of primer ready for a coat of Humbrol No. 56.

I do like the weathering effect, I tried this before and it didn’t work too well for and now I think I know why I tried salt first then hairspray but from the looks of your photos the other way works a lot better.

I’ll have to pop over on my next spare day, although the size of that beast of a power box it will take me years to model.

The updates on this project have been a bit slow but I have been gradually working on the model. I had as planned moved on to painting the walls, an awkward process the motor appears grey and the brick a light red/Cotswold stone colour and trying to get the right balance took several attempts, eventually I painted the motor in humbrol no.32 and the brick in lifecolor stone red and ended up with a satisfying result (if not a little too dark). When I was reading an article on scratch building buildings, the author mentioned using google earth to measure buildings and that is when it struck me. Not once had I even looked at google earth, I had tried street view which didn’t go right into the car park and therefore I had given up on this tool and worked on my assumptions. What a silly mistake, looking on google earth, I discovered a few things, my building is about 10 per cent too narrow and the boiler house is not joined to the building by another room but is actually an open area housing what I suspect is the UPS generator. Thirdly the boiler house has an additional door on the side, something I only discovered when putting google earth into 3D, amazing I used to drive by that door everyday I worked there yet not once did I recall it. I’d would rather have noticed this mistake before painting but that’s the way things go so I decided to rectify two of the mistakes (the building will have to stay skinny now) and replace some of the doors which I wasn’t happy with. The old room was cut off cut down and reassembled. I decided to reuse the gate I had previously made (although I had thought at the time it was a vent). I also opened up the new door way on the side. I found some more photos of the exterior of the building on the Swindon panel preservation site when the panel was being lifted by crane to go to it’s new home in Didcot and using them I weathered my rebuild accordingly with the heavily paint peeled facia board being a particularly pleasing effect. With the building now corrected I decided to work on finishing off bits of detail, working from the S&T mess room back towards the boiler house. I added the glass porch to the mess room, skylights to locker area on the ground floor. Skylights to the opps floor toilets, air vents and the drainage channel to the roof. I also tidied any exposed edges etc. Just the boiler house to work on now before building the tricky fire escape and adding the down pipes.

Nicely done certainly improves the look of those wagons. I too have been pondering why Dapol left such a large gap,but I was watching a video on YouTube the other day where a gbrf 66 rolled in with a rake of these and the real life ones have an unsightly gap too, although maybe not as large as Dapol’s!

For name ideas I prefer a name that might have been rather than a random name. Have a look at a map of the area you want to model and see the place names for ideas even taking one or using similar. Or have a look at the History of the area, who would have settled there and what they may have called the place, Anglo Saxon tended to use words like Ley (wood clearing or meadow) dun/don (hill) ford (river crossing).

The signalmen where complying they where getting wet so i’ve made the signalbox watertight. So doors and windows have been added. I found a few more photos of the panel in the late 80s and the doors where blue so although it’s too late for the interior doors the exterior have been painted the correct colour. The kitchen window was rarely kept shut so I’ve modelled it in its standard position. The fire exit has also been modelled in the open position, so firstly you can see in the panel and as I aim to model my layout in spring this was the usual position for the door at that time of year. The stair case is also finished. As is the S&T mess room. The work bench and locker room. And the manager’s office is also complete. Next will be painting the brickwork.

That’s great news to hear I’d certainly be after the old oak ploughs and I’d like to echo the suggestion of selling them as a pair.

Would be nice if they did the photo of your 73 hauling one looks fabulous and I never realised what a delightful model their Brighton belle is (must resist, must resist).

You know the moment you decide to work on your Pullman set, Farish or Dapol will be announce their own versions, so by all means go ahead as it will help the rest of us acquire some long needed Pullman rolling stock

I had two both were on dc i’ve since sold the models on but I ran one with a dummy unit and I found them all too be really good models (particularly for the ups and downs you can have with Dapol models). My blue and grey unit was quite heavily used on my Cornish layout and always ran well even over insulfrogs and 1st radius curves, the biggest problem for me was the exhausts getting knocked off when taking out of the box, I cut the hole in the foam tray to a larger size in the end.

Exciting stuff to here the Didcot layout is making progress (I never thought I’d get excited about Didcot). If you are after info about the Didcot area from the signalling point of view I may be able to help you out, as I singed the workstation a few years back.

Strange your 121 is having issues I’ve not experienced such with mine did the additional weight solve the problem?

I think it can be said I spent a fair bit of time detailing the interior so I didn’t want to just throw a roof on top. I hadn’t quite planned out how I was going to do the roof but I had left enough gap above the interior walls to fit a ceiling and room from any interior wires to light up the interior. The ceiling is made from mount board, the tiles lined out using a silver gel pen and then light holes cut out. Originally I cut some clear acetate to size to fit in the holes, by hole number 9 this was far to much a pain in the a*** and so the rest I cut into strips glued on top and used some glue n glaze around the edge of each hole. I was originally going to wire up some led’s to do the lighting until I watched a YouTube video by New Junction and Richard pointed me in the direction of these led light strips, 10 for 2.99 plus free postage from a well know auction site. They do the job perfectly I wired them up and glued into place. I will glue the roof on and turn it into a light box, the four holes are for the skylights. The lights in action, they are certainly bright enough. The toilets are lit up and signaller TC can use loo unaware of anyone spying on him through the skylight.

With the staircase complete I moved onto the S&T offices, here is where I realised that either the staircase is a little too wide or the whole building was not wide enough. And my first attempt resulting in the S&T mess room being far too narrow espaecially when compared to photos. As you can see behind is the rebuild, slightly wider but probally still a scale 6-10ft too narrow. However it is far to late to try and start rebuilding. With all building complete it was time to add the outer skin. The platform side and... The front of the signalbox, the brick walls is slater brick plastic sheet, it’s very useful but the brick courses where not quite at right angles to the sheet which made cutting to size slight more interesting. The concrete fashia is made from thin card and slaters corraguted sheet was used for the pigeon loft. I will now start adding the doors windows and internal lighting.