Booking Hall

No work done on the layout for the past day, instead, made a start on the Scalescenes Clyde Puffer. It's very demanding in the card cutting department, but the way it comes together is a work of art!

Well spotted Huw, it is indeed 00.

Hi Keith, it's 00. The corrugated cardboard base is 2'4" x 2'9".

As I am SI in a mobile home I shipped in all I thought I would need to build a dockside themed micro layout.

I'm clearly no Michelangelo!!

All track is now glued down, wired up and tested. I spaced out the sleepers on the top left exit to the fiddlestick, the oil tank siding and part of the engine shed siding as these will be the ones I will ballast. You may wonder why I only did part of the engine shed one, well, the answer is that I'm using second hand track and the sleepers are inordinately difficult to move, because of oxidisation on the rails, so that was the point at which I gave up! I told myself that engine sidings were often rail deep in ash, crud and so on, so I could safely get away with this here! Next job is to paint the backscene. This will be a first, as all my previous backscenes have used commercial prints, but I don't have one to hand and as you know the whole thing is a bit of an afterthought. I do have some blue, white and grey paint, so I'm going to try an impressionistic sky scene, graduated from blue to pale blue with a dash of grey thrown in. Luckily, there won't be much of it visible so I will probably get away with it even if it goes horribly wrong!

Nice of you to say so Steve, thank you!

Thanks Adam, wiring up is progressing well and I should soon be able to find out what potential it has. Well done for spotting 'Moby Dick', I just hope I'm a better modeller than a cartoonist!

That's a very kind thought Steve, but I'd crashed on before I saw your post. The site office is closed for the duration so I don't know whether any post would get through anyway! I just used cotton thread on the crane , wrapped around each railing stanchion once and fixed with a drop of glue. It will probably look a bit 'hairy' close up! Wishing you well with your project.

My boss used to say to me "Paul, don't forget the 6 P's - Proper Planning Prevents P_ _s Poor Performance"! I was reminded of that today after I lifted the bottom right hand point and re-planned the track layout using the newly-found Y point. It was then that I realised I didn't have enough fishplates left to join all the remaining track together. Not a problem if I'd stuck with the Peco Setrack RH point I'd originally used, as it has some fishplates already fitted. Doh! No chance of getting any more fishplates anytime soon, so I had to stick the RH point down again, although I have adjusted the angle slightly so that there is a better flow to the next one and to the crane siding. Apropos also of not planning properly, I realised that I haven't printed off enough of the Scalescenes cobbled and concrete hardstanding sheets to complete the layout, and stuck in my caravan, I've no means of doing any more, so I'm revising my plans to now ballast the oil tank siding, the engine shed siding and the exit stage left siding, however, I've no ballast, so I'm drying teabags and will go and dig up some soil to dry out, sieve and blend with the tea grains to try and make something that will do. Modelling under isolation circumstances certainly makes you face challenges and make the best of the little you have!!

It's ben a few days and some slow progress has ben made. The dockside level insulation has all been fitted in place and after marking out the track layout the points were glued down. All the rest of the track has been cut to length and also awaits glueing down, but before I do that I need to add the wiring. I need two power feeds, one at each corner top left and bottom right, and a couple of isolation breaks would also be useful. One part way along the crane siding and the other on the loco 'shed' siding middle right, so that shunting can take place using two locos. This threw up a problem - where to fix the power feed jack socket and isolating section switches? I decided that a backscene was needed on which they could be mounted, and which would also help support the low relief buildings on the road level. Fixing one to a cardboard baseboard was not going to be easy though. After a bit of thought I made a triangular piece of hardboard with a piece of 3" x 2" glued and screwed to it which will be glued down to the baseboard to give the maximum resistance to bending. The backscene board, also to be made of double layered corrugated cardboard, will be glued to this and to the back edge of the insulation board. Then, further pieces of insulation board (purloined polystyrene packaging) will be glued in the void to raise this up to the road level and to give further support to the backscene. If care is taken, this should hopefully suffice. I'm not entirely happy with an awkward curve between the bottom right hand point leading to the next point. The chance discovery of another Peco Streamline Y point could help to ease this, and, as a bonus, allow the crane siding to be positioned closer to the dock edge, giving more space for the goods shed behind it. Trouble is, I glued the points down with Copydex so getting the one to be replaced up again might not be easy! Other time has been spent building the Scalescenes dock edge and the crane base.

It is such an appealing subject isn't it. I look forward to seeing your develop too Steve.

Construction has started. I just hope the glue dries before I need one of those tins of soup! Once it has set, I will be able to turn it over and cut off the excess to fill in the gaps you can't see at the back. I will have enough to complete the dock level, but will have to come up with another solution for the upper road level. I also kept one of the sheets of foil paper I peeled from the insulation as it might come in useful as the coverings for storage tanks.

A couple of days playing about with bits of track and points, and after looking at pictures on the net of the prototype location in the good old days has produced this layout which is slightly modified from the plan in Paul Lunn's book. As I have five inches more in one dimension than he planned for, I've repositioned one of the points to give a greater siding length (the one shown terminating in the oil tank compound). I've also assumed the use of two 'fiddlesticks', one at each corner, to increase operating potential, although it could be shunted without them, and probably will have to be for the time being, as I barely have enough insulation board to cover the area needed. This design makes good use of the third dimension (height) to to compensate for the micro's inherent lack of area. There are three levels here, sea level, dock level and the the town overlooking the docks with the interesting road bridge masking the right hand edge of the baseboard (viewed from the front, which I am calling the watery bit!). Tomorrow, construction starts, I'm really excited about this!

Wow, yes, it looks to be almost certainly the same loco. Thank you for letting me know about this.

Oooh, thanks Nick. Might start dropping hints for Fathers Day . . .

Hmmm . . . I'm having second thoughts - "what, already!!!" I hear you shout. Well, yes, but not about actually building this layout - just when to do it. Having finished the baseboards yesterday and having set them up, the first thing that struck me was just how much room they took up, and, having played about with some track I felt that i was in danger of crashing on with something that I hadn't properly planned. I think that it's just too big a project to do whilst I'm stuck in isolation in a caravan in a couple of days time, and I don't want this to be an added cause of stress, so I had a rethink. The rethink led me to Paul Lunn's book 'Micro layouts' and his plan for a micro model of part of Milford Haven docks in 2'4" x 2'4". This has most of the elements I was looking for in a dockside layout, albeit on a much reduced scale and, happily, I had a piece of corrugated cardboard large enough to act as the baseboard, and a couple of leftover offcuts of insulation board. So this is the new project, in which I can 'cut my teeth' on water modelling, trackwork infilling and things 'coastal', and still build the Scalescenes Clyde Puffer to go with it or to use on the big one when I get back home.

Thanks for that link Nick, I'll have a browse.

Yes, the original ones are a bit crude, aren't they. I have had some success in grinding them down with a carborundum wheel in a dremel whilst rotating the wheelset in a lathe. Whilst that reduces the flange and ribbing on the tread, it doesn't reduce the overall width of the tread. One of the dock shunters I bought on Ebay already had the wheels turned down and a double reduction gear system installed in place of the original Triang one. Unfortunately, the gears are not very concentric and speed isn't even, aside from being very noisy.

Thanks for those ideas, I hadn't thought of a boiler house, but one would look good.

Thanks for the comments all. The original plan for the south docks was laid out in a 4'x2' board, and I understand, was built and exhibited. I'd have liked to have seen it. I was thinking of adapting either the top or the bottom half of the published plan for my interpretation. The extra length I have will make the need for adapting bought points, or for making my own, unnecessary, and I will have perhaps a couple of inches greater depth i.e. 1'2" on the actual dockside, allowing for sufficient water to float one of the Scalescenes boats in! If I'm clever enough and get the track centres right, the line could exit stage left onto the fiddleyard I built for 'Far Wittering'. I'll have a play with some points and track today and see what develops.

Bad luck, Steve.

So, an underlying lung condition is forcing me into self-isolation during the COVID-19 emergency. Luckily, we have a holiday caravan in the countryside to which I can go, but although walks in the fields are nice, what to do if it rains? Build another layout perhaps . . . . I've long wanted to build a dockside layout and I already have several items salted away for just such a purpose - a couple of Triang Dock Authority shunters, one of those freelance 4-wheel Lima shunters that I want to detail up, a Heljan 1363 saddletank, DJH 02 diesel shunter, Airfix travelling crane kit (not quite right for a dockside, I know), and several Scalescenes download kits. Oh, and fond memories of the Weymouth harbour tramway which I saw in operation in the 1970's . . . . Also, out of said caravan when we had some alterations work done, came three seat frames which I carefully rescued as they looked very like baseboard frames to me. Joined together they make an end to end layout just under 7ft long by 1ft 7inches wide, quite a useful size, and using up more 'scrap' I'm going to make the tops from some left-over PVC planking. Additional height for the dock wall will be given by some 50mm PUR insulation board. The trackplan isn't finally decided upon yet, but it will probably draw inspiration from Yarmouth South Quay which was published in the Railway Modeller some 40 years ago. And I'll have to give some thought to a name for it too.

Looks great Jerry. This has come on really quickly!

Ready for the paint shop!