HeatonLodge40

Spent all day today weathering and weighting (with lead) 43 new Dapol VEA’s. The Railfreight red on the vans appears to be self coloured plastic which is surprising. Even heavily weathered this plastic appearance is still apparent which is a tad disappointing. The roofs have all had a taste of Precision paints roof colour which gives them a nice dusty appearance. Tomorrow I’ll finish them, oil the axles and wire in a working Dapol brake light in the last van. This train will then be hauled by a class 40 going forward ..

Cheers it most definitely is!

Busy week this week.. After learning from the experience in Wakefield and on the advice from Jonathan the automation guru, I’m going to create a DMU depot at the west end of the fiddle yard. This is so the 4 car 124 Trans Pennine (currently about to undergo a twin motor conversion) and up to 6 x 2 car units will be able to run around each other when called into operation. This will free up the other dead end siding for loco stabling points especially shunters. So before April I’m aiming to have a 10 ft long DMU depot (multiple Heljan Kits), one of the working 1m high lighting gantries, a coach washing machine and various other bits and bats in a new fully scenic’ed area. Much progress on the gantries. In the end I decided to use brazing for the structural brass angle corners then plastruct for the cross members araldited in. There are 4 islands for railway workers to rest whilst climbing the internal ladders. Ladders are also plastruct whilst the islands are wills chequer plate sheets. Fiddly but looking good. The gantry head with 30 odd searchlights will be a challenge! Also started repairing and servicing the wagon fleet. Hell of a lot to do before April. Put 8/9/10th April in your diary by the way especially if you live in the South West! Will be publishing details of the next exhibition up imminently!

I’m not too bothered Paul as long as it’s a common prototype. The part of the layout I’m working on now is fictitious. Any help much appreciated. Simon

I’m after building a couple of Pylons around 1m high on my O gauge Heaton Lodge Junction. If anyone knows if there is a kit available I’d be grateful. At the moment I’m scratch building 3 x 1m high marshalling yard lighting gantries.

On another note regarding the next outing for HLJ - I’ll be posting the details on Monday. Much larger event this one with hopefully a good number of multi scale layouts, lots of trade etc Its not long either - Friday/Saturday/Sunday April 8/9/10th

Well the second tower is coming along nicely. I still can’t get the solder to adhere to the brass even with a 100W iron. So I’m back to a blowtorch and a lot of flux. It’s works well if you heat up the brass first..

Today I’ve put cooling towers to the back of my mind and been experimenting with a prototype lighting gantry. This has taken about 5 hrs to get to this stage. Soldering iron didn’t work (brass too thick) so resorted to a blow torch and lots of solder but it wasn’t easy. I melted 3 expensive clamps for starters. In the end I’ve decided to solder the 4 corners (brass angle) to a brass sheet and hot glue all the supporting girders. I’ll go around these at the end and tidy up the remaining hot glue of which there are many dollops. Looking at photos of the real thing there are resting islands at the top of each internal ladder so I reckon on using steel sheet for these. It’s taking shape though, not bad for a first effort. The actual lighting itself and all the paraphernalia around it will be the hard bit! Meanwhile the MPD has had the sanding treatment and once the ladders/aircon/heating units and corrugated iron are added it will get the Halfords primer treatment

In other news after trawling the net for hours I’ve finally found enough working searchlights for the lighting gantry towers. These are from a company on Amazon called Evemodel who seem to do dozens of lighting related bits for model railways. At £15.99 for 5 they are great value. I went for the OO size as the O are overscale in my opinion. Trouble is I need minimum 30 for each gantry! And there’s 7 gantry’s.

I think that is the best idea yet Simon. Thanks!

I’ve been giving this idea a lot of thought. It’s finding a material that can be made into the basic cooling tower shape, is light enough for two people to carry and stays in shape and doesn’t bow. Possibly aluminium sheet? Not sure. 6m is a tad high but 3m high is doable I think. These basic MPD sheds are big enough and I’ve a load more to build yet.! Going to add drainpipes, change the roof structure to corrugated iron, ladders and air conditioning units for starters.

Great idea!!

Happy New Year everyone! I’ve written off January to clear & tidy the basement and office all of which look like a demolition sites. (see pics) Having applied this treatment to my newly spotless workshop (see other pic!) I’m cracking on with building the 10 Heljan MPD depots for the fiddle yard. Going to super detail these, how I’m not sure at the moment. However the fiddle/marshalling yard will have working ground signals on all 35 roads, (inc dead end siding) 5 of the working 1m high lighting gantries I’ve mentioned, various foot gantries for the staff, dummy point motors, about a ton of ballast (god I hate ballasting), walkways, portacabins, offices, concrete trunking and more signals. This will be the fictitious area of the layout and not to be confused with a slice of Healey Mills to the east of it. I really enjoyed watching the long MGR’s pulling into the yard whilst another one next to it started to slowly trundle away. I’m even mulling over adding a new section going forward with 3 giant cooling towers (these would have to be at least 3 metres high) and a working MGR unloading facility. To make room for this I’d have to use the idea of building onto trolleys which roll up to the side of the layout. Couple of years away this to be honest .. Anyway the copper & brass has arrived for the lighting gantries so best get cracking with the blow torch

Thanks Chris great idea. I was working with BID in Wakefield for the exhibition there as they helped me promote it, so I’ll ask for their contact in Bristol. Thanks again

I’ve been talking to the owners. It’s under renovation and not available until 2023 unfortunately

I’ve looked into the Dept store idea in depth, the issue is the landlords who are difficult to even communicate with, don’t like the idea of 1000’s of people traipsing through their property & aren’t keen on the short term ness of it all. Also to be honest I need to make the next exhibition much larger with way more layouts & the trade. I’m pretty sure the latter are all on board which is great. It’s finding a venue that’s not massively expensive, good transport links and big. I always aimed to do just HLJ on its own initially so I could bank on the attendance from Wakefield being roughly replicated elsewhere. Then if I add many more layouts /trade the numbers will surely only increase. It may end up being a more traditional exhibition with a few tweaks and HLJ as one of the main attractions who knows. I’ll have something buttoned down next month I think

Ah sorry! Its not confirmed yet anyway

Thought I’d have a couple of weeks off after the expedition cough cough exhibition. So today I’m in the basement all day trying to clear it up and this evening making the first of 10 Heljan MPD sheds. Not had a bash at one of these before but it’s going together well. This is for the fiddle/marshalling yard. I’ve also ordered a big quantity of brass angle to fabricate the first of seven 1 metre tall lighting gantries.

If I could add one other tip. I always insert a large sheet of reusable see through plastic sheet between the boards when constructing scenery. That means you can ensure the scenery level is exactly the same on each board before pulling it out after all the polystyrene/PVA/static grass dries. This also works very well with ballasting over board joints to avoid ugly splits in ballast when you take apart the boards

Just to say thanks to everyone on here for their support with this project. And especially those who visited. Biggest thanks to Jonathan, Rob, Lee, Tim & Paul for all their time plus David, Chris & Peter for lending their locos and stock. Last truck load is back in the basement which now looks as though someone has chucked a grenade in there. I’m not going back there for two weeks. (he says). Numbers wise we had a total of 16244 over the two weeks of which 1681 paid in advance and didn’t turn up…I’m guessing because of Covid & Boris’ announcements. I was hoping for 20000 plus but given the above I’m not really surprised. The longest distance visitors travelled (that I know about) was 2 Americans from Wisconsin, 4 Germans from Nuremberg, 3 Swedes from Gothenburg & 2 Chinese from a city I’ve never heard of. (Work that one out). Also had 2 ex signal men from HLJ signal box, lots of ex Mirfield shed men and PW gangs. Countless current railway staff including most of those who work the Trans Pennine route! Nicest touch was from a chap who brought in the original BR remodelling diagram on parchment from 1970. Ive learned a lot - the main lesson being I will never do a 2 week exhibition ever again.! That said, the layout ran superbly overall. We had two major shorts which stopped everything for a total of 12 mins each time. Bit nerve wracking that was. Only cleaned the track a couple of times. The final four hours on the last Sunday was one of these occasions whereby we ran basically in manual with a reduced service. Got the derailments down to one a day sometimes - most were due to the odd train missing a sensor so not stopping in time and rear ending another. My overriding best memory was seeing two massive MGR’s crossing the crossovers in opposite directions together and lots of cameras flashing. Of about £100k’s worth of locos performing, the most requested was Thomas the Tank Engine. Most amusing complaint (from 6 people) that there was two many trains running at the same time ! Next stop is the South West - probably Bristol. If anyone knows of a venue big enough (that isn’t £25,000 a day in that location) - I’d be extremely grateful to know about it. Much bigger exhibition next time with all the trade & lots more layouts. Have a good Christmas!

Hi Rob well spotted! The answer is I had a major failure with a switched diamond which needs a full day fix. So decided to switch that down line out. Shame cos it’s got a lovely working banner repeater on it. It’ll be up for next time!

Hi and thanks for the constructive comments. At the venue there are only entrances at either end of the building. I couldn’t justify opening both entrances as I haven’t the budget to staff both since they are 60 metres from each other. As with all exhibitions it’s impossible to control the flow of people, whatever you do. I did the best I could with what I had to play with

Well after all this at least my mum is pleased as she’s about to appear on ARD German TV news who are doing a ‘good news story’ about the layout.! I don’t know what she told them but I’m not bothered as it’s all in German obviously

Nope I’ll just do 4 day events with more exhibition layouts as well as the trade etc

The other day Neil Harvey visited the layout. I used many of Neil’s photos on researching the location when I was originally researching it & on the information boards at the side of the model. This is one of his from the other day