Jules

Fantastic

Oozes atmosphere - if the pics were b&w, you could think they were from the '50s

Plans of:

• Ashburton - Karau, P. (1978). Great Western Branch Line Terminii Volume Two. Oxford: Oxford Publishing Co. pp. 30-53
• Buckfastleigh - Clark, R.H. (1979). An Historical Survey of Great Western Stations, Layouts and Illustrations, Volume Two. Oxford: Oxford Publishing Co. pp. 36-37
• Staverton - Clark, R.H. (1981). An Historical Survey of Great Western Stations, Layouts and Illustrations, Volume Three. Oxford: Oxford Publishing Co. pp. 188-189
• Totnes - Clark, R.H. (1981). An Historical Survey of Great Western Stations, Layouts and Illustrations, Volume Three. Oxford: Oxford Publishing Co. pp. 200-204

C.J.Freezer idea for a complete branch

• Kingdom, A.R. (1977). The Ashburton Branch (and the Totnes Quay Line). Oxford: Oxford Publishing Co. pp.144-145 which was sourced from:
• Railway Modeller, Plan of the Month for February 1968

Buckfastleigh to scale in 4mm (bridge to bridge) would be about 25ft x 5ft.

Thanks for the info and sources. At 25ft I think I might have to give it a miss for a few years or so

Righto. Some more minor progress on my GW BLT.

I've added a water crane and fire devil (great name!), built from the Ratio kit.

The reddy/orange mess in the goods yard sidings is to bring the ground level almost to the top of the rails - need to obtain a 'correct' shade of grey to paint the whole yard rather than the black/dark grey that it currently is.

The other pics are just using up bandwidth to give some idea of whats going on! The last one shows the complete layout and fiddle yard with my rather tight cassettes.

The pannier tank is an old Mainline example from about 1982 (I think) Always used to be a poor runner, stored for best part of 25 years, but now runs a treat with my KPC feedback controller.

I've often thought that Buckfastleigh in its original form would make a great layout - although it might take up a far amount of room (in 00 at least).

Mind you, I need to finish my other layout before thinking about the next.....

What a great find - a real shame they lost the Ashburton terminus, and Buckfastleigh has changed a bit as well.

Hi

The paint for the pagoda, railings etc are from Phoenix Precision paints :

P22 GWR Stone No. 3 (Dark Stone)

P21 GWR Stone No. 1 (Light Stone)

All brush painted straight from the tin. I'm not sure if it should be thinned a bit as it is quite thick, but it seems to work ok.

It's one of the options under consideration

Thanks for the kind words chaps

I'm not quite happy with the shade of grey for the platform yet, and the goods yard (cunningly hidden in the photos!) is just a black painted wilderness at the moment.

I'm also not convinced that I will stick with the cassettes I am using for the fiddle yard, they are too narrow to make changing stock easy and they are a bit cumbersome to manoeuvre, so I am mulling over some options. Don't expect a rapid solution!

I'm hoping that now the nights are dark I might get a bit more done.....

Some minor progress has been made, a few posters added to the building and railings, some lamps and benches. Not much I know!

The backscene has also been added to part of the um... backscene! It's not quite big enough so I need to get a few more sections to complete it. I really should have done a bit more planning and put this in place before doing the rest of the layout, but hey, every days a school day!

Hope the pics interest someone.....

A bit more progress, the station building is almost complete, just needs a few more posters/advertising jobbies to complete the look, as well as signs for the waiting rooms, tickets etc. Anyone know where I can source them?

Also done is the platform fencing and name board (Dart Castings supports, Coopercraft board and letters). The fence needs some advertising adding, the platform needs benches and people - it all looks a bit bare at the moment!

Anyway here are a couple of snaps - the building is just plonked on at the moment, the photos really show the need for seating it properly.

Hope they are of interest to someone.....

Some progress on the station building....

The interior is as finished as it is going to be... I should have added lighting as now the roof and canopy are on you cannot really see the inside anyway!

Still to add the chimneys and notice boards etc - but it's slowly getting there.

The pic makes the canopy look like it slopes rather a lot towards the rear - it does slightly but not as much as suggested!

Thanks for the comments chaps.

I shall probably do a couple of exteria mods as well - probably a flat canopy, and anything else easy to make it slightly more individual.

Might take a bit of time tho.....

Rescuing this topic from the depths of of the forum....

I haven't done a lot on the layout in the previous couple of months, been operating it a fair amount but no actual progress on the layout...until now!

I have started constructing the Ratio GW station kit (Castle Cary I believe) but as I wanted to model it with the doors open, I thought I would hack together a bit of an interior. I have to say that I used no prototype drawings or photos for this - just vague memories of buildings on preserved railways......so Pendon standard it most certainly isn't!! Not sure how much will actually be seen once the door frames, doors (open) roof etc are on, but at least it stops it being an empty shell.

The booking office

The ladies waiting room

Overall view

Gratuitous shot of the small praire waiting to pass under Frog Lane

Cheers

J

another couple from today - one arrives, one departs......

Bonus at Westerleigh!

Taken today, Teenage Spirt arrived at about 12:15, while Ribblehead Viaduct was still there. I believe there were problems in the Ashchurch area which led to this.

60071 was smoking a bit - the driver said it felt a bit off - hope he made it back ok

A bit of progress - some green stuff has started growing, and a line of fence posts await their wire on the cutting leading to the Frog Lane bridge.

Apart from that, my 20+ year old Mike's Models (I think ) yard crane now sits on top of its plinth, and I think that's it!

I said progress would be slow..Some pictures to illustrate the goings on:

Hi Mikkel

Thanks for the comment.

I just built the cattle dock and track infill as per the Ratio instructions - it isn't modelled on/from any prototype picture.

I do however seem to recall that most pictures of cattle docks that I have seen do have a similar sort of arrangement. Unfortunately, I am at work at the moment so cannot have a look for any pics to back me up!

From memory, Cirencester and Ashburton are two places that show this feature.

Cheers

Jules

Not quite!

It is in Gloucestershire (well - it's South Gloucestershire these days) just south of Yate, or north of Coalpit heath if you prefer, on the A432.

There are about 4 houses there and it is more of a rise than a hill

Righto - a bit of an update. I don't appear to have achieved a great deal recently, so I think since the last update I have :

1. painted the track

2. done most of the ballast

3. painted the bridge

4. started the yard crane base

5. built a wagon

6. shunted some wagons about!

Hopefully the pics below illustrate the progress....

Thanks for the kind words chaps

Progress will be slow.......

The cassettes are quite good, although the next ones I make will be a bit wider - with the current ones it is very difficult to place stock on the track. I'm also not too sure about the long term use of croc clips to transfer power to the cassettes, but it will do for now.

It is indeed a Wills Craftsman kit. It was made for my previous layout, and I made it harder by reversing the plans! (the plans have the house on the right and the station bit on the left).

It is only temporarily placed to fill in the blank space. I intend to make something a bit more GW.

A bit of progress :

- Balsa for the platform in approx position and shape, now need to construct the front walls and surface

- scenic break bridge constructed and placed in place to

- allow a start to be made on the landscape.

The cutting sides are made with polystyrene as the basic shape with newspaper soaked in wallpaper paste over the top. It will be finished off with a skim of plastery type stuff to give the final surface. Never tried this method before so should be interesting!

Ta for looking

A little bit of progress... the control panel is (almost) finished. Seemed to take a long time to get to this stage, just to control seven points!

The only thing left to do is mark out the track schematic on it. Remarkable, it all worked correctly with no faults when powered : my 'back of an envelope' cable numbering and layout was obviously up to the job! Now I think I will make it a bit more formal for future reference.

Anyway, a couple of really exciting pics to show my hard work....more details on request if anyone is interested.

Now the fun stuff can begin...

A little bit of progress, but not much!

I have been playing trains a bit before continuing too much just to make sure it mainly works. Haven't built the control panel yet as I am still trying to find the right power socket for the plug of my transformer, so in the meantime I am using my trusty old H&M Duette. It still gives surprisingly good control.

Also I have been testing out my fiddle yard cassettes. I think I might have made them a bit narrow! I think any more I make will be a bit wider to help with putting rolling stock in position. I am currently applying power using croc clips which appears to work pretty well so I will probably stick with this method for now.

Any building shown are purely temporary just to break up the bareness!

Ta for the comment and a Happy New Year to you too

The continuation of the wiring will be slightly delayed as I am short of a couple of switches and connectors.....