Northwick Group

As promised here's a link to a video of Northwick at the exhibition

Here are some more pictures from day 2 If you came to the exhibition and saw the layout we hope you enjoyed seeing it in action.There will be a short video from the exhibition showing the layout in motion later.

This weekend we are at the Illford and west Essex model railway show in Romford, here are some pictures from day 1 If you're wondering what to do tomorrow and are in the area then why not come along to the exhibition and see it in person.

Over the past 2 friday evenings we have been busy making sure that everything on the to do list is completed before our next exhibition outing which is the West Essex Modelrail which is on the 22nd/23rd April, why not come along and see the additions to the layout in person. the first evening we spent trying to blend the existing grass on board 2 with the new grass. The new grass was too green so we have gone over it with a mixture of straw, burnt grass and hay to help blend it in, it looks a lot better now but we may have to have another go in some places the joint of old and new can still be made out mainly due to there being no bushes, trees, etc. on the extension yet. Last friday evening we spent testing the layout and some of the stock to make sure that everything was working as it should be, fortunately it was so we had a running session with the theme this time being "Exhibition", here are a couple of pictures of what was running. Also running was a newly weathered 9f which is pictured here outside the engine shed. As you can see a person who shall remain anonymous is trying to give a subtle hint about the cleanliness of the loco.

Since the last update quite a few things have been done, the first being to fix the triangular piece of wood along the top of the station board back scenes. some of the details were added to the cattle dock, as well as the fencing receiving the first layer of weathering. The coal merchants office has been fitted to its new position along with the staithes and the fence poles for the edge of the field on board 1 The grounded wagon body for the timber yard was first painted grey then brown and finally blue with the intention of gently rubbing back through the layers to expose the colours so that it looks as though the paint is peeling off, the roof has also been fitted and has been made to look like the roof canvas has ripped. This was made from a layer of brass with a piece of slaters plastic planking stuck to the top, this was the followed with taking a square of toilet paper, separating the 2 layers and ripping a small hole in 1 layer before sticking it to the plastic planking using plastic weld, the excess paper was then trimmed off and painted in primer, the exposed planking was then given its base colour. A new tree has also been made by Tim and fitted to board 1. And finally the name for the hotel has been applied.

Don't worry, if it's Northwick that you would like to see then the next exhibition that we will be attending is the West Essex Modelrail which is on the 22/23 April and is being held at St. Edwards School, London Road, Romford RM7 9NX.

Twickenham & district MRC will be holding an event at twickenham library, Garfield Road, TW1 3JT from 10am to 3.30pm this Saturday (25th), it is a free event and there will be 2 working layouts there and is aimed to showcase what the club gets up to, so if you're wanting something to do then why not come along. Northwick will be there with the goods yard board and the station board, so come along and have a look.

Last friday was a productive one, the first thing to be done was to place the new hotel since its details have been added to see how it looks. a view from the goods yard entrance a closer view of the hotel. The next task was to apply the next layer of ash to yard on board 1, this was then followed by the main task/event for the evening which was to tackle the back scene for the station board, this was the part that we were least looking forward to doing as we had had several failed attempts on the first time of doing it. The first bit of good news was that we found that we actually had the correct piece to join onto the existing back scene on board 1 - sometimes it is useful to get it wrong initially, before removing the plywood for the back scenes from the station board we marked out where the tree line was so that we could ensure that everything would line up once it had been reassembled, the 2 pieces of plywood were then removed from the station board, sanded down to give a better surface for the glue and wiped down to remove any dust. The paper back scenes were then cut roughly to size, it was then time to take the plunge and stick the paper to the plywood, we decided that we would stick to the method that we had found had worked for the original back scene which was to have someone spreading the copydex glue whilst another person follows laying the paper on and a third person with a wall paper seem roller going over the whole thing to make sure it stuck and to get the wrinkles out. Once this was done then the plywood was turned over so that the paper was against the table and weights were applied to the top of the plywood until the glue had set. Fortunately the glue had set in time for us to reattach the back scene to the board and then attach the station board to board 1 to see if we had lined it up successfully or not. As you can see in the pictures below we managed to line it up and it has really changed the look of the town. The top edge will be neatened up in due course by adding a triangular section of wood along the top so that it will be the same as the other boards - it has been roughly cut down at the moment

last week we had both a Friday evening and a Saturday workday so a lot was done to both boards 1 and the station boards, couple this with the fact that we have been busy working on the station board during the week means that this has changed quite drastically. So lets start off with the station board, the first job to be done was to remove the big thick wall that runs along the front of the houses and shops. before after As you can probably see in the photos above the paving (which is printed paper) sustained a lot of damage during the wall being demolished so this will also have to be replaced - although some how the window cleaner on his ladder was unaffected, luckily we had some slaters textured sheet to hand so this was used to give a new paved surface. A curb stone was then added along the edge of the paving along the top of the wall - this is a strip of plasticard measuring 1mm x 3mm, also the white section of the walling was also covered over with some brick paper that matches the original and the paving was painted and then given a black wash. Next up was the last of the red on the station board has now disappeared with a layer of the vermiculite mixture to give a relatively flat and yet uneven surface in the timber yard and also create a small mound in the triangle between the 2 roads, once this had dried then the road surface for the road that runs along the side of the yard was given a fine layer of pva and then finely crushed road stone was sprinkled over and rolled in place with a wall paper seam roller, once dry the rest was hovered off (with a stocking over the end to save the loose for next time), On top of these 2 changes there are quite a few other changes that can be seen in the picture such as the new railing have been added along the front of the shops and houses, all of the adjustments that have been made to the pavements on the station building side have been painted and then weathered in so that the old paving now blends in with the new and the hotel can be seen in the background having received a coat of light cream paint and had its windows fixed in position. The next job was to fit the new fencing round the timber yard as well as try out the new wagon body that has been built for the yard - this has been scratch built by Tim Thomas and is based on a S&DJR 8 ton covered goods van. After that was to put the ground cover down in the yard, this is a mixture of soil from the garden, ballast, the road stone and ash, also the small triangular mound got some static grass. Lastly the road was weathered by rubbing the fine crushed road stone where we wanted it to be lighter and the streets were re-populated. Now onto board 1, on the Friday night we hit another issue, the same issue as before some of the ballast that we applied hadn't stuck again! , but we think that we have worked out what is going on which is that the area affected is where the cattle dock siding used to be and under the track was roofing felt so this is what we recon in causing the problem. but this worked in out favor in that we realized that we had forgotten to put the drainage in for where you would wash the cattle pens out and the contents would go on the track, so we installed these (once the loose ballast had been removed), we also took the opportunity to modify what is currently the brake van siding and lengthen it so that it will become the coal wagon siding which will then free up the goods building siding so that you don't have to move the coal wagons each time you want a van from the goods shed (which is what we do currently), so the buffers were removed along with the coal merchants, their office, staithes and yard light and the area for the new track was dug out and the new track was laid in place and fixed down. once we had done this we roughened the roofing felt up, applied a layer of glue and then some ballast we then wet the ballast down and put dilute pva on top and left it. when we returned on the saturday workday we found that the ballast had stuck! so we moved onto the next step which was to dampen the ballast and apply the layer of ash to blend it in, for where the coal siding is we ground down some of the bigger bits left over from the bonfire ash that we collect in a coffee grinder and then sieved over the area we wanted it. Also whilst the ballast was damp we went over the join between the ballast and grass with a layer of static grass which then makes it fade from one to the other better. The new positions of the coal merchants office and staithes were tried out at the end of the day.

Having had a running session the previous week we turned back to working on the layout, the plan had been to start to blend the new part of the yard in with the old. This did not quite gone to plan as we found out that when we put the layout up the coal merchant would have some difficulty in getting in his hut. Obviously not all of the ballast had stuck and some of it had worked loose so we found on closer inspection that there were 2 areas that hadn't stuck properly so these were pulled up and relaid and whilst we were at it we decided to put another layer of glue over the rest just make sure we hadn't missed any more bits. Having redone the ballast we added a new layer of ash to start to blend it in, this is when we discovered that we were beginning to running out of our existing stash of ash so needed to get some more. The scouts at the hall that the club uses must have known about this as when we went to get some more from the remains of their bonfire (our usual supply) we discovered that instead of it being as wet slurry (it had been raining recently) it was dry and still warm from where they had had a fire earlier in the day! so no need to dry it out - we just had to make sure that we didn't collect any of the bits that were still glowing. The next job tackled was to fix the fencing for the cattle dock and end unloading area, here are a couple of pictures of it with some cattle wagons and lowmac posed in the siding (the white staining on the fencing is from the catalyst for the glue reacting to the paint and will be painted over) After this the dirt track way in the field was tackled as the grass going down the middle was too wide for the land rover's wheel base This was narrowed by gently scraping at the grass with a scalpel blade. Then the dirt (collected from the garden) was added. It was then time to have a look at the station board, having had another look at the hotel we decided that it looked too small compared to the houses that rise up towards the back of the board. So we decided to rebuild the hotel but add an extra floor to it to see if that would help. Here's a before and after shot Before After We are happy with the result so are going to proceed with building the bigger of the 2 hotels which is being built by Tim. We also tried out the idea we had for the office for the timber yard that will be going on the front of the board, which is going to be a grounded wagon body, here's a picture showing one in place along with a lorry to see if it will work in the space available, the white section is where the road will be going.

Last Friday saw the last of the red desert on board 1 as the ballast was added to the goods yard. whilst the ballast was still wet the first layer of weathering was added which was a layer of ash (collected form the remains of scouts bonfire), that was then dried and then sieved before being added to the layout. here is the board after the ash.

Last Friday's work mainly centered around getting the board ready for the red desert to disappear this coming Friday. The first job was to move the goods yard toilet from its current position. To its new position, which was chosen as it keeps it near the front so that everyone can still see bob reading his newspaper. The next task was to fix down and connect the new track work, it had been hoped that we could reuse the old track for the siding and just move it over unfortunately this was not the case, so we have replaced the damaged section with new track. This was then followed by the cattle dock being fixed down and load tested to make sure it can handle the livestock! (real reason is if you look at the picture in the earlier post the dock has a slight warp in it so weight was added whilst the glue set) Finaly the last job was to fill in the gap between the old and new baseboards, this was done by using the vermiculite mixture that we have used else where on the layout. So the board may not look too different to how it did last week but it will hopefully change quite a bit for next weeks update.

Last friday was a running night for Northwick and it turned out that the theme for the night was Pullman coaches as that was pretty much all that was brought along to run behind the locomotives! The first one being the "Northwick Belle" which was brought on by Ex LNER class A1 "North British" comprising of Daffodil Bar, The Hadrian Bar (1), Trianon Bar, New Century Bar, The Hadrian Bar (2) and a 12 wheel Brake 3rd Car No 95 (for the passengers to go once they have drunk too much) Next to arrive was Ex SR Schools Class "Brighton" with another 6 Pullman (from the loco Fortuna, Rainbow, Phoenix, Myrtle, Leona & Car 79) Next up was BR Standard & "Apollo" arriving with 5 more Pullman (Car 209, Minerva, Lady Dalziel, Car 248, Athene) We then had an unusual visitor to haul the Northwick Bell off the layout, Having come all the way from the Isle of Sodor, Gordon - hauled the train to the next stop. Also running was an Ex Caledonian Railway class 495 - 14672 which has been built from a kit by Cyril At the end of the running night it was time to take all of the stock off so as there was 1 loco left on (Brighton) and we had heard that the Hornby schools class can haul a lot of coaches with out an issue we decided to see how many coaches it could haul in 1 go. So we set about assembling a train which ended up being the 17 Pullman that were in use during the evening, coupled up Brighton and gently applied the power the loco shifted the whole lot with ease and there was no sign of wheel-slip. Here are some pictures of the train before it set off. A view from the front. And then a view from the rear of the train.

Its been a while since the last update but good progress was made with Northwick during the christmas break, mainly with the station/town board. Here is a picture of what it looked like before any work was started. The first step was to remove the buildings to the right of the picture, there was a lot of concern within the group with the decision to move these buildings in that they may get severely damaged when they were taken off the board but they need to be moved to get it to look right. To our surprise when a flat-head screw driver was gently eased between the base board and the buildings they just popped off and no damage was caused at all! (to be honest they came off with such ease that it was amazing that they hadn't detached themselves already) As the buildings are going to be set back a bit more the road will need to be widened, this meant that the existing one would have to be taken up, again using the flat-head screw driver it came up easily, this revealed that under the old road surface there was a void that would need filling in before the new road went down. The opportunity was also taken to pose the buildings in their new position, which shows the new space created at the back of the board where the road will curve off. Once the buildings had been stuck down and the void filled with polystyrene it was then time to cut out the new back scene boards as the base board is now deeper and slightly wider than is was originally, the printed paper back scene will be stuck to them once we have finished the main work on the board so that we wont damage it. The new road was then laid out using card, as you can see at the back of the board it curves off. Fine wet and dry sand paper was then stuck on top of the card and a new curb made from 2mm square plastic rod was stuck around the curve. The plan is that eventually between the rear back scene and the road there will be a hotel. With the raised walkway that runs along the front of the houses on the right the decision was taken to continue it round the corner of the houses instead of having it finish as a dead end, so the basic framework has been made and fitted. As the road is now wider it was looking too wide towards the rear of the baseboard so the current thinking is to have a section of the pavement (shown in the picture below by the piece of paper sitting on the road) jutting out into the road and form a sort of lay-bye outside the station for either taxis to wait or a small market to be held.

The look of Northwick was changed quite drastically at the clubs last meeting of the year, with the hill that has recently been added to boards 2&1 receiving its static grass, here are some pictures of how it looks now. Also the track that was for the existing cattle dock has been lifted and moved (temporarily at the moment) to where the new cattle dock will be going just to see if we could be lucky and not have to replace the existing track, which has almost turned out to be the case as all of it will be reusable apart from roughly the last 10cm which has got glue all over it from where the buffers were fitted to it, there are also dome damaged sleepers in this section. Here is an end on shot which shows all of the bits together. Also on the layout were some members recent acquisitions. The first one being Steve B's BR 18000 - the prototype mainline gas turbine-electric locomotive The other one being Tim's LMS patriot class locomotive 5551 "The Unknown Warrior" There will be further updates on Northwick between now and the 6th of January (when we next meet at the club) as we all have our own projects that we are doing for the layout to be getting on with.

Last friday the gloop mixture that was applied to the hill was sanded down, a second coat of gloop was then applied as the join between the existing scenics and the new was a bit obvious and a better result was achieved, unfortunately we forgot to take any pictures of this part. Once we had applied the gloop we then moved onto marking out where the road at the front of the station board will be going (see picture below) the road that branches off to the left of the picture will continue onto board 1 for a short distance before disappearing off the edge of the board, this then "joins up" with the road on board 3. just behind the slope on board 1 will be the toilets (which are being kept near the front so that people can still see inside it easily). In the gap on the station board between the pub and the road it is intended at the moment that there will be a small builders yard there, in the small triangle that is between the 2 roads will be a direction sign with various nearby villages on and to the right of the picture will be the terraced houses and shops that are currently there.

More progress was made last Friday, the first item to be done was the extension to the station board to be added on. The plan for this board is to leave all of the buildings that are on the left of the picture where they are currently, but all of the buildings on the right of the picture will be uprooted and moved to the new edge of the board, this will then create enough room at the rear of the board for the road to curve round 90 degrees and disappear behind the houses (as the road currently terminates in a tree on the back scene), we may then add some new low relief terraced houses along the back to help disguise it further. The next job was to start carving the polystyrene that was stuck to boards 1&2 last week, once this was done then the first layer of "gloup" (a mixture of art mache, vermiculite, brown paint and water) was added.

As we are not going to another exhibition until April 2017 we have decided to do the extensions on boards 1&2 the base board extensions have now been fitted in the same way as boards 3&4 were. Here is Board 2 once the extension has been fixed on (as you can see it is being load tested and just goes to show if there is a convenient place to put something then it will be put there!) Next up was the extension for board 1, before the extension was applied the opportunity was taken to take some pictures of how the board currently looks as this will change quite drastically once the extension and scenic work has been done. Here are some pictures of how it currently looks. Once the extensions have been applied. Now for a brief description of what is planned for this board. The line taht currently serves the cattle dock will be pulled up along with the cattle dock, the line will then be replaced and will come out closer to the new edge of the board the new cattle dock with an end unloading ramp will then be put next to this line, this will open up the area that is currently between the cattle dock line and what is currently the brake van line. We are also thinking of moving the coal staithes and coal merchants hut so that the brake van line will continue up to the yard light, this will then become the new coal siding and the coal staithes and merchants hut will then be placed in the space between this line and the new cattle dock line. Here is a picture showing the rough location of the new cattle dock. If any of this doesn't make sense or isn't clear then I will crate a diagram showing the old next to the new.

Last Saturday we took Northwick to the wycrail exhibition, if you saw us there we hope you enjoyed seeing the layout in person. Here are a few pictures from the exhibition. Evening Star passes fellow class mate 92192 in the engine yard. 41661 shunts the goods yard. Sir Ironside passes ivatt class 4 43038 in the engine yard Jinty 47482 was on station pilot duties. Newly finished coaches also appeared on the layout (The 2 blood and custard ones) which are a Ex LMS articulated third open + third open, these have been built by Tim Thomas. Ivatt class 4 prepares to depart with a goods train. Trematon Castle arrives with a passenger train.

2 weeks worth of work to report on this post. With the extensions to boards 3&4 we are happy with how the join between the existing boards and the extension have so far been disguised, there is however one part that lets the side down which is the road as you can clearly see the join between the new road and the existing road. Here is a picture to show where the problem is. The first job was to give the new road some texture as the existing road has got some fine ballast on it. This was achieved by grinding down some ballast that we had in stock to the same fineness and sprinkling it over the road and then sticking it down, a couple of layers of paint were then applied. This was when we discovered that we had made a huge error, what we thought was ballast was in fact cat litter which is aiming to be used as a light weight ballast by another group within the club. The problem is (which wont come as a huge surprise) that the cat litter expands when it gets wet so we ended up with a lot of texture to the road! we picked off the worst of it whilst it was still wet and the rest was left to dry fully. We then returned the following Friday, got the layout out and started trying to think what the best way to move forward was. We found out whilst experimenting with other things that if you rubbed the road with your fingers then this broke down the cat litter and left a fine uneven texture to the road, the sort that we were aiming for! It was then just a case of weathering in the new road to blend in with the existing road so the section which new road joins directly with the existing road was given a browny-grey colour to match the base colour of the existing road which slowly faded to the colour of the new road, this was then followed a mixture of browns, blacks and greys that were dry brushed on the road to give a more uneven colour. Below are some pictures of how the road looked like by the end of last Friday. Let us know what you think of the road so far, do you think that it could be improved in any way?

Here is a video from the weekend

Here are some more pictures from day 2 If you went to the exhibition we hope that you enjoyed seeing Northwick in person. There will be a video of the layout in action to follow Our next exhibition will be Wycrail 2016 on the 5th November at Cressex Community School.

Here is a selection of pictures from day one of the Farnham Model Railway Exhibition.

Last friday more trees were replaced, all of these have been built by Tim Thomas. The first one to be replaced was the second tree that is in the field with the cows in, here is a picture of before and after. Before After This was then followed by some of the trees that go along the back of the layout, again here is a before and after shot Before After We have also added another tree to the layout, this one being in the corner of the field on the extension of board 3. Here is a shot of the underside of the tree showing the apples (the apples look so luminous because of the flash on the camera) Hedges were also added to the fence boundary between the field and engine yard. The layout has now been packed up and is ready for its outing this weekend to the Farnham & District MRC exhibition which is being held at the Connaught leisure centre, hope to see you there.

More progress was made with boards 3 & 4 last week. On board 4 the fencing was continued to the other side of the track, bushes were added to the existing fencing and the grass verges were added to the road sides. On board 3 the issue of there being too much ballast around the tracks that lead to the turntable has been resolved by digging out the existing ballast and adding a far smaller amount and covered it with ash, whilst this was being done the opportunity was taken to cover up a few holes that had appeared in the ballast. We also added a small amount of static grass around the water crane to simulate weeds growing there.