goldngreen

Ok. Good luck with it. It is all looking good. I like the art deco style of the buildings you are creating and, as a maker of buildings primarily in card or plasticard, I am interested to see how the balsa approach goes. I am considering using balsa for coal staithes in my much less ambitious n gauge project which is a bit stalled at the moment.

Like to see how the balsa structures are progressing.

Good starting point. I hope the wiring goes well.

The coaling stage is built from the excellent Poppys Woodtech laser-cut wooden kit. Despite the small scale the kit goes together very easily. The fact that it is real wood makes painting and weathering easy. I used a combination of water colour and pastels. I just need to get some coal on it now.

Good to see an update. Hope you resolve the problems soon. Hope you are all keeping well.

Still progressing at a snails pace but the snail has gathered a bit of pace recently.

Good work. I like the bus on the bridge. It brings back memories of when I was a regular visitor to Edinburgh. It would be good if your work could courier the laptop to you. Stay safe,

The signal box is made from the excellent Severn Valley Models etched brass kit. The kit is assembled using cyanoacrylate glue and goes together very well. I used Deluxe Materials Glue'n'Glaze to attach the window glazing. I struggled with one or two of the small parts, particularly in the stair case but that was more my one-eyed ham-fisted approach than the kit. Once complete it was primed and then painted with Precision Paints light stone and dark stone plus Humbrol for the walls, windows and roof. It was then weathered using pastels and weathering powder.

The line exits stage right through the back-scene. I have decided to use a low relief bridge to disguise this exit. The exit is just a hole in the back-scene board and also cut in to the back-scene sheet: The idea of the low relief bridge is that it will just slot in to the hole to make it look more bridge like. Since I want it to recede in the gap on the underside, it also has to be removable to allow separation of the layout from the fiddle yard. Here are a couple of images of the low relief bridge from the front and from the back to show how it slots in: Construction is simple using thick card and a cut down Peco plate girder bridge side. The buttresses are finished with Scalescenes dark blue brick. Here are a couple of images of the mock bridge in place, one front on and one from the layout viewers angle: More scenic work to go on in the foreground and to cover the right hand edge but I must retain the ability to remove the mock up.

The size of the layout means that scenery is at a minimum. I do however want some different levels in the ground, raised behind the station building with a slope down to the yard, raised behind the yard and raised more to the right where the trains disappears back stage. I have used two approaches. The raised areas behind the yard are so small that they do not warrant traditional methods like mod-roc. Instead I have built them up using DAS modelling clay, glued down with PVA. The raised area behind the station is just stiff card supported by stiff card battens (like for the platforms) with a sloping spur down to the yard. The steeper slopes are in-filled using the DAS clay approach. I have also included a muddy patch with a puddle at the bottom of the slope using an attempt at the Gordon Gravett method using a microscope slide (painted a suitably muddy colour on the underside) for the puddle water. All is then painted with emulsion and then grassed using the excellent Green Scene Flockit. The yard areas have also been further treated using pastels but this is only a basic start. More to be done on the interface to the back-scene plus more on trees, bushes etc. The modern house in the back-scene will be hidden!

The pub in my previous post is the former Albion at 86 Armley Road in Leeds. This is what it looks like now: This is the Google Maps reference: https://www.google.com/maps/@53.7972561,-1.5723353,3a,75y,33.46h,97.05t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sR3k-CLrmyuA9zxl5DT2Eew!2e0!7i16384!8i8192 This is a Google Maps shot from a few years ago when it was still a pub: I have only been to Leeds a couple of times and I have never been to the Albion. The reason I thought it might be recognized by railway modellers is that it was the prototype for a model by Builder Plus from the late 70s until Builder Plus disappeared. Most of the Builder Plus models were very good for their time. They used photo captured brick/stone images to make up in to really good models. As a young British N gauge modeller in the 70s they were a game changer. I could now make British outline models rather than relying on Pola or Faller. It led me on scratch building. I built the Builder Plus model of the Albion in the late seventies and found a good place for it on my layout. The layout was sold when I went off to college along with the model. A few years ago I picked up an unmade copy of the old N Gauge Builder Plus pub at a show. Knowing that there are not many about as the company no longer exists, I scanned it in to my computer and backed it up. I also picked up a copy of the Builder Plus Bank. I then had an idea. Was the model based on a real prototype? After some searching on the web I found the original pictured above. At the time it was still open. The original was however built of a different colour brick to that used in the Builder Plus kit. Builder Plus had used their standard brick colour. So using the Builder Plus kit as a template I set about making my own version using the Google images to sample the brick and other features from the building, using multi-layered image manipulation software. The model in the post is the result of building my rather make-shift, one-off kit. My model may not be that wonderful but I think it is a lovely prototype. I am pleased that I managed to capture an image from while it was still a pub before the windows were changed. I now wish I had saved a few more from other angles. Here are some more pictures found here: http://www.leodis.net/display.aspx?resourceIdentifier=2003116_81023807. I have only reproduced their samples. Please visit their site for originals. and finally a more recent one:

I will post a follow up with more information

I never got back to posting after Christmas. First a job change and now ... So here is something I did earlier. Not my best modelling but I am curious to see who recognises it. If you do recognise it perhaps it looks a bit different.

Lovely modelling. Very impressive.

The backscene shown in the picture is temporary. It is not deep enough for the presentation. I have another that is deep enough but it also suffers from the problem that you have correctly highlighted. Ultimately I think I will have to make my own. The design of the box means that they can be swapped in and out.

The platforms use Peco platform edging with a cardboard top. The fact that this is a terminus means that the platforms meet at one end. To avoid joins in the surface, I cut all the platforms from a single sheet of cardboard using a template marked on tracing paper laid on the baseboard. The surface is airbrush painted with a Humbrol grey and then weathered using pastels.

To support the back-scene, control the viewing angles and support the lighting a presentation box was required. This is constructed out of the same plywood used for the baseboards plus a few odd bits of wood found lying around the garage. It is held together by half round moudling and glued with water proof wood working adhesive. It fits snugly round the outside of the based board and is bolted to it using large bolts with glued captive nuts. This works because the design of the Billy Bookcase means that the baseboard is slightly shorter than the bookcase - see the base board post to understand why. The images also show the platforms. These are built from a single piece of card and edged with Peco platform edging. The tops are painted with a mid grey and then weathered with pastels. The buildings have been built over a number of earlier years and may not make it to the final version.

I went on the Sunday and found that it was not too bad. It can get very busy.

Here are a couple of photos from a visit to the Warley Exhibition this weekend. I should have taken more. There was lots to see.

It lives permanently on the book cases. All of the controls are available from the front (or back) so it can be operated there. I can keep the controllers etc. on the shelf below. There is a 4cm bridge section over the raised edges of the shelves between the layout and the fiddle yard. It is made out of foam board.

If I can build a Billy Bookcase layout, then perhaps I can build a Billy Bookcase fiddle yard. Adjoining the 80cm Billy Bookcase on which the layout lives is a 60cm Billy Bookcase. I do not think that the 60cm version is made anymore, however, I have one and it is the ideal place to locate the fiddle yard. Although the layout itself will only accommodate short trains, I did not want the fiddle yard to be restrictive length. I therefore decided to build a traverser rather than using points. The base for the fiddle yard is a smaller replica of that used for the layout which fits snugly on top of the bookcase. I have gone for light weight construction using a large sheet of plasticard which I got directly from Slaters. Although it is in their catalogue I could not find it in any shops. The traverser slides on two brass runners glued directly to the baseboard. It is held in place by brass strips at either end. The track is glued using a hot glue gun. The traverser is moved by hand. Alignment is achieved using home-made brass bolts which also complete the circuit to the aligned track when connected. The other side is permanently wired. A curiosity of the Billy Bookcase when used for this purpose is the raised edges mean that the available area on the top is 4 cm shorter than the overall length. There is a 2cm gap at either end. To connect the fiddle yard to the layout this gap must be bridged. This is achieved with a piece of foam board with two track sections. Hopefully all of this is visible in the images:

For ballasting I use sandpit sand bought from ToysRUs before it disappeared. It is reasonably coarse so can pass for ballast in n gauge. One of the things I do not like about commercial N gauge track is the depth of the sleepers. I therefore wanted to use the ballast to hide this depth consistently. After some experimentation I came up with a scheme to achieve this. Once the track was laid, I lined the edge of the sleepers with evergreen 1mm quarter-round StripStyrene. The depth is just a little lower than Peco code 55 sleeper depth. An example of this can be seen in the attached image showing a bit of test track. Ballast was then glued to the edge strip using water proof wood working adhesive painted on to the strip with a fine brush. Note that the water proof wood working adhesive was used for this step to avoid the next step, which involves water, undoing this step. Once this was dry the remaining gaps between the sleepers were ballasted in the traditional way by spreading ballast carefully and setting with watered down PVA with a little washing up liquid to kill surface tension. This creates the illusion of a ballast shoulder on which the sleepers are resting. It was then airbrush weathered using a range of colours but mostly Precision Paints Track Colour. EE D6827 has no real business being there. I just like it!

The track is glued to the foam board cover on the baseboard using water proof wood working adhesive. Testing was completed bit by bit as the track laying continued.

There is no time like the present so track has been bought from Cheltenham Model Centre. I am ready to go.

Good question. I have got a bit further on now and so far, so good. It is sitting on very stable shelves and sits firmly between the slightly raised edges. That provides additional support. It does however seem very rigid and square in its own right.