jdsnape

Couple of minor jobs last night - some puddles made by painting on the back of some cellophane packaging. Surrounded by very thin DAS clay, which hopefully should stop it looking too flat when it is grassed over: I also started making some check rails for the road crossing, one fixed in place so far. The gap should probably be a little smaller but I didn’t file down the flat of the rail so that’s as close as I could get it:

Well, it's been a while! We had some time away visiting family that we'd not seen since pre-covid, then camping - neither of which conducive to making progress! Nevertheless, all the track was laid, and with the eager assistance of my five year old we made a small embankment at the back of the layout - not prototypical for Snape, but I wanted to avoid it looking like a flat plank: I think the back was also ballasted at this point - again, with some help making sure it wasn't on the sleepers! I found carefully dripping IPA alcohol over it then dropping diluted PVA with a pipette worked super well. To get the goods yard look I've added DAS air clay, which we flattened out and stippled with a brush: it was then painted with a thin coat of Tamiya acrylics - so far its had flat earth and light grey, and a dilute black wash for some weathering around the edges. Again in a departure from the prototype I've decided to have a small coal stage and shed in the bottom right hand corner, so have started weathering that. I think I'm mostly happy with how that has turned out, although it feels a bit messy at the moment. I'm hoping that will improve as I start to grass some of the areas (e.g. the bottom bit of the picture currently in blue). We've also had a visitor from the GNSR railway courtesy of eBay - some re-lettering to do at some point!

I have a reel of kynar wire which is usually used for circuit board repair/bodging. The specific one I have is 30AWG. It is super thin, and would be suitable for low current applications like LEDs

Thanks for the post and the photos - you really do get the feel that it's Snape! A slight pause in work while I sort some other stuff, but hope to make some more progress next week.

Oh, I also intended to include this from a map showing the track layout at the site. The small building to the south of the line adjacent to the road is the small goods shed, where agricultural/local traffic would be loaded. The building just to the north of the line (east of the S.P) was the station master's house, which had a small goods platform outside. You can see the two lines meeting at the wagon turntable just outside the maltings complex. All traffic from this point onwards was pulled by horse / tractor. I wanted a runaround really, and didn't quite have space for a turntable so replaced this with a point for this layout.

A few months ago, I decided to build my first layout (at least, first since I was a child!). I got our two boys all excited about it, found a (small) space and started buying bits for it. However - a house came up for sale in the village, and we decided to try and put things in motion to sell ours. It was agreed I could make a start on my original plan, but it was quickly decided that my rapidly assembled baseboards made the spare room look far too small. I was slightly disappointed, but realised that this was a good opportunity to make a small shelf-layout / diorama as a chance to practise techniques in advance of building a bigger layout if the house move goes ahead. My inspiration is the goods-only station at Snape Maltings. It's a beautiful place, and you may notice a link to my name :) I've been reading the excellent book "The Snape Branch" by Peter Paye, and found some interesting photos online: Photo embedded from "Transport Treasury" - https://www.transporttreasury.com/p937405195/e37f455b1 Photo embedded from "Transport Treasury" - https://www.transporttreasury.com/p937405195/e3cda260d Sadly, I don't have space to model the bridge! it was an interesting site as there was no passenger station ever built. The line split into two, joining again at a waggon turntable just in front of the maltings entrance. There was therefore no run-around for the engine, with wagons shunted by rope from the adjacent loop, horse or later on tractor. The space I have is about 1.2m by 30cm - so there's obviously not room to do a faithful reconstruction. Nevertheless, I hope to practise my modelling in a way that perhaps indicates the original site - although I'm not sure there will be room for a J15! I built the baseboards and started laying out track to make sure the angles worked: The maltings building is from Lasercutrailwaymodels and I believe was based on the maltings at Snape. At Snape the lines passed through a more ornate gateway, but there's not space for that so this will have to do! This seemed to work with a small engine, and one or two trucks. I soldered dropper wires onto each track piece - possibly overkill for this but thought it would be good to practise. I drilled holes to allow for point motors to be fitted later - my plan is to experiment with some servos driven by an Arduino. I laid cork under the track and yard area and glued the track with copydex: I knew there was a reason I kept those textbooks! Under the baseboard (no photo yet) I ran two wires from a mains cable the length of the boards, and used my wire strippers to cut away a small piece of insulation next to each dropper before soldering it on. I need to go back and insulate that - I forgot to add heat shrink until after I had done all the soldering (every time!). I did make one small mistake with the soldering and accidentally used a metal fishplate on the turnout leading to the siding - as you can see in the picture above! As it's Peco electrofrog this caused a short when the point was thrown. I managed to bend the sides of the fishplate and pull it out, although I did scratch the rail slightly in the process which was a little annoying! Now that is fixed, a small test loco I have runs up and down, although I did have to widen the flange spacing to get it to pass over the points. Next up will be painting the track (something I intended to do before glueing - but got too excited about getting it working!) and ballasting...

I'm not sure about the angle, but single gates are perfectly normal, especially on a small rural light railway. See this example from the Mid-Suffolk Light Railway at Wilby: https://www.transporttreasury.com/p422157391/e9dd47f37

There were a few books published - one by Rev. Awdry, and I think one by Christopher. I found a copy of it here from googling it (not sure the legitimacy of having the whole PDF available! but you don't seem to be able to buy the book any more) https://studylib.net/doc/25511551/the-island-of-sodor-pdf--1-

my apologies, as I said in my other reply I totally missed that there were new posts to this topic. Thank you for your time putting this together! I think having the shed in the back corner is a good use of that space- it feels a bit empty otherwise

my apologies - I totally missed this reply! I had a slight hiatus while we sorted some bits for the house, but I'm back to planning this and I really appreciate the time you took to put that together. What you have there captures my original intent pretty much perfectly I think, much better than I was able to! You are right that the space is only accessible from the front. I've had another measure up and I think I could loose the cutout on the corner, and maybe expand a little bit to the right, if I rearrange the desk that is there (it will make accessing some drawers a little tricky but I can live with that I think). My plan is to get a piece of wood roughly the right size and check that it fits the space OK, before making it up into a proper baseboard. I can then start laying out with templates to check how it works. I'm reasonably set on the location (but I can't say why!). Era-wise I'm probably thinking post-grouping but pre british rail - but I don't have much of anything at the moment (apart from a solitary J72, but that doesn't limit me much!)

that would be quite the find!

i did suggest that it was one of the kings from the house of lancaster earlier :) was just a bit sidetracked as every other example was taken from a coat of arms of somewhere else. There are also a number of contemporary etchings of John of Gaunt the first duke which are similar - e.g. this. No colour though! I think there's enough scope to choose what you like for this one...

If it is a saint then Oswald is probably the most likely contender, although more usually associated with the North East I think.

The top right quadrant has me a bit stumped. It is pretty rare to have a whole person as a charge. It's hard to make out, but it looks like it might be a crowned king holding a sword (or possibly sceptre?). I would have thought that would be presumptuous if it were applied. I wonder if it is just an image of a king, possible in reference to the house of Lancaster?

That seems like a good match. I can't find any records of his involvement, at the time I think he was the Earl of Burlington, later becoming the 7th Duke (all this stuff is a bit beyond me though!). There is lots of info about his involvement in the barrow and furness railway, and he made a personal loan to the Ulverstone and Lancaster Railway so lots of involvement in railways in the area.