Horsehay Railway Modeller

a strange question guys, has anyone seen the inside of coalbrookdale station? Im mocking up the building in CAD and have plenty of outside photographs, as well as google maps to get vague roof dimensions. but have no real idea of internal layout. here is a top down veiw of the building. I know its a long shot but if anyone knows a vague layout feel free to annotate.

As stated above i have also made progress on the cardboard formers for the terrain. the main strucutre consists of corrugated plastic, whilst formers for the terrain are cardboard.I have also been very careful to line the back edge of the hill with corrugated plastic , ensuring no hot glue touches the backscene, i hope this will aid in its eventual removal, allowing the backscene to be removed or replaced without touching the hillside. you can also see a flat level at the top ogf the hillside for the church to sit. I then added a seemingly endless number of cardboard formers and am now finishing off with some masking tape to add more supports before plaster bandage is applied later in the week. i hope to add a finishing layer of sculptamold, a mix of plaster and paper pulp, which will be used to finnish all and texture of the terrain before painting. Finally for tonight i ended up raising the level of the river by about an inch so as to make the banks slightly shallower. This has helped slighly however the slopes are still going to be a little steep. As this is in no way an exact representation of the river severn Iam thinking of putting some sort of rock face on one side allowing me to put a riverside gravel track in (possibly with some semblence of a plateway or wagon way) for river crossings i am thinking of a viaduct for the mainlines as they are curved, and some sort of steel girder bridge for the branchline serving the iron works.

Over the past few days i have made continued progress on the hillside (more to follow) and have also completed the new control panel. This replaces a panel that was over to one side of the layout by a sofa. I have since found it makes more sense for it to be at the front of the layout and it just so happens now it will be opposite the signal box. The origional panel was made in word and printed and laminated. however i found it lacked character. I have grown to love the hand drawn style of all of the track plans in the book i have got on the wenlock line. (scroll up for photos) and decided to copy this style. i ended up using my soldering iron and some 3mm lazer ply, normal ply would probably have sufficed but i happened across some cheap lazer ply on ebay. I printed the basic track outline out from the computer and used grease proof paper to trace it on to the board. i then scrived it all with a very hot soldering iron. i then proceded to add all of the little notes that add all of the character such as place names and sketches of the platforms and buildings. I soon realised i needed some place names. In the end i settled on keeping Buildwas and Horsehay as they are off of the layout, However i needed to rename my semi fictional version of this section of line. as it is inspired by coalbrookdale station and works i needed a parody name. I ended up using a place name generator found on the internet which allowed be to generate a name based off of words and phrases. I ended up with Coalorsdale. as in coal-horse-dale which seems a reasonable fictional place name whilst giving a very obvious nod to my inspiration of coalbrookdale . I then wired up some toggle switches for the points into my previously installed chocolate boxes, before hot gluing the face on, hot glue is easily removable and therefore allows easy access whilst providing a semi permanemnt but hidden fixing. I still need to make a similar panel for the iron works however I am going to leave the storage yard points on their origional panel - i think ill eventually fit a dcc decoder to the off scene so they can be controlled from anywhere around the layout.

something else to think on. i agree it would be excellent to model ill see if theres anywhere that would work. might have to be something airbrushed on to the backscene.

Here is what I've done so far for the hill at the left end of the layout. And here is a terrible sketch showing my idea for the cutting with somewhat dense woodland and a small church halfway up the valley. Possibly in N gauge to create some. Forced perspective and distance.

Work has begun on scenery! I was originally going to form all of the slopes / cuttings etc. With foam, however I am going for the much cheaper option ( as I already have it) of using cardboard formers. I have begun making formers for a slope/ cutting along the front edge of the layout. This will be filled with newspaper and covered in a mix of plaster bandage and sculptamold. I began using currugated plastic for a solid front former. This will later be covered with mdf facia. I then added formers for the embankment with cardboard every three inches. I have also begun making a small raised area at the left hand side of the layout. This is so I can have a tunnel portal to hide the entrance to the fiddle yard. This area should be the power station but I don't have the room to do it justice. In my version of the layout the power station lays a mile or two further down the line. This will allow me to run coal trains off scene towards the imaginary power station. This end of the layout with the tunnel will be somewhat more fictional. Although I aim to have a rising valley with some sort of church similar to those in the local area.

Here is a photgraph of the roof at the works in 1925 from Ken Jones' book on the wenlcok branch.

Antoher couple of little projects completed. i have modified all of my points using a method discovered on youtube from charlie at chadwick model railway. i have removed the springs on most of my peco points and they had a tendancy to slide down . charlie recomended a 1.5mm by 0.5mm strip of plasticard superglued to the sleeper next to the throw bar. Now i have glued them all in place there is no posibility of them slipping down. i have also purchased a new loco. a Hornby 61xx in br late crest. i have dcc fitted her with a lenz chip and will be re numbering her in the future to 6101 which was based at tyseley in the 60s. you can also see above i have shortened the upper siding. this will be where a small engine shed , based off of the one at much wenlock, will be situated. the longer siding in front will be a spare goods siding . possiby with a small shed similar to that at much wenlock. finally ihave installed the plywood supports for the new panel and wired tthe points to chocolate box. i am temporarily using the chocolate box connections to move points whilst i await some plywood to make the control panel faces. not alot of other major progress has been made on the layout however i have been ironing out all of the little issues with track work and now the layout is all running smoothly, touch wood, except for two new Dapol 21ton mineral wagons which refuse to stay on the track. After reading other threads i think i will try buying new wheelsets for the wagons as people seem to think it is an issue with flanges on Dapol wheels. i have also made some more design progress off of the layout. it may be due to recently submiting a CAD assignment for university but i have been designing lots of different features for the layout recently. below are some mock ups for the works at the top of the gradient. i am basing it vaguely off of coalbrookdale works which has many different pitched roofs of all shapes and sizes over several connected buildings. They were also built to fit within the track.

whilst not at university i am in the area yes.

i havent come across this yet. thank you very much for bringing it to my attention ill be sure to have a look at some point when in need of inspiration.

Nothing major to report but lots of smaller projects. I have began converting to kadee couplers. I've had to hack about my old lima locos a bit but they have come out looking OK. I have also started on a few wagons. I have also begun adding a main control panel which will be at the front of the layout by the signal box instead of off in one corner. I have added a little shelf for it to rest on. It will also provide a handy resting place for drinks etc. Whilst operating. Finally I have removed the old panel and wired in the switches for the bus wires on a separate board. The wires you can see will be for a small panel up at the iron works whilst the majority of point switches will now be moved to be operated at the station. There also remains a panel in the fiddle yard. I had originally printed graphics for the boards in word, but am now trying out skribing the text in to plywood with a soldering iron. (don't worry I have a spare tip)

Yes they are indeed. They are ID Backscenes. made by a company called art-printers. i baught mine at hattons. you can either buy them on photo paper or the "premium range" for a few punds more gets you sticky back paper with some sort of plastic coating. They come in 10ft packs i.e. 2 5 ft sections per pack and there are multiple joining packs - some up to 60ft long! I used Hills and dales Packs A and B to get 20ft.

i was thinking more 1961/2. i have managed to find a database with where locos were allocated throughout the time of british railways . this includes a page on the shed at wellington which had 64xx, 57xx, 2mt, 5101, standard class 3. all based at wellington in the early sixites. I am also modelling through trains opperated by deisels and some desiel hydraulics. i have seen photographs of westerns in wellington station in 1962 so they were in the area. unlickely to have gone down the branch but i couldnt resist having a few passing trains go through the station. local traction will be mostly steam with a few small deisel shunters class 03/04 most likely. i am mostly using the branch line to give me a base and will not be wholey accurately depicting it. so far i have modelled the train below which will act as a diverted mainline passenger train. (an excuse to see a long passenger rake travel aroundf the layout) i hope to model through taffic to the power station ( in this case plant A as plant B was still in the planning phase) as well as local traffic to whatever works i now deide to put at the top of the gradient. likely alot of 16 ton and 21 ton mineral wagons foir both. passenger traffic from wellington to much wenlock and back seems mostly to be a few coaches hauled by various local steam. there are also photographs of long rakes of mineral wagons parked in the sidings at buildwas.

Thank you very much for your help. looks like i have some locos to buy now

ok, so a mainline goods train comes in . the station pilot prepares it to change direction . then a small shunting style loco based at the station takes the relevant wagons up the gradient to the industry. here the rake is shunted about by a small industry shunter. then the rake is taken back down the gradient into the station where the mainline locomotive continues its journey, or they can wait in the sidings to the left of the station to be collected later.

i am lucky enough to be sponsored by the Royal Navy through university so i have some cashflow to spend on hobbies as well as my student "expences" Thank you for your ideas. As this is an amalgamation as apposed to a true depiction i was hoping to model features from around the line. as well as from my own head. I quite like the idea of having somewhere scenic to store locos out at the front of the layout. they can sit and tick over in the shed or on the lead and not get in the way of opperations. i do quite like the idea of changing the incline to an industry, there are indeed plenty of local prototypes and this does add some local "supply and demand" to opperate too. Ill have a think on that one. I think the cooling towers are a great idea. At the moment my backscene is a generic countryside, perhaps the cooling towers in the distance could give a hint that this layout is based vagualy on the locality. this is something i had been considering. when i designed this layout i hadn't been modelling for some years so didnt go into as much detail of operations when i was planning as perhaps i should have done. if i keep the engine shed i will have to consider moving the current crossover to the right and replacing it with a trailing crossover. one thaught i had in mind is that local traction may take over the train either for shunting in the goods sidings to the left of the station or to take it up the incline. In this case the train pulls into the left to right platform. Either a shunting or mainline loco pulls out of the engine shed and couples to the left end of the train, it can then move the wrong way down the mainline and then up the inlcine. a consideration here is also the possibility of moving the van. as there is no run around, either a second loco is needed to move the van or two vans are needed one at each end of the rake.

Thank you very much. now im all up to date i hope to upload progress as and when i make it.

Finally my most recent progree has been better geographically and prototypically grounding the layout. I recently rediscovered an old book on my local branch line. formerly the wellington and severn junction line also known as the wenlock branch , it joined the local works in horsehay with the works in coalbrookdale and ironbridge as well as buildwas power station. it also saw passenger use between wellington and craven arms. people may be famlilliar with this route as it is now the telford steam railway. a local heritage railway that owns and runs horsehay goods yard (what remains) and roughly a mille of the single track mainline. Flew my drone over from my back garden as i cant get out myself to take some descent photographs. i soon realised the line was exactly what i wanted to model. a sleepy branchline, soon to be closed by british rail. it had a lot of goods traffic but also some passenger traffic and much potential for through trains towards craven arms or shrewsbury. the line was closed in 1964 as it was bypassed roughly a mile to the east, however if i ignore this line i can run full length passenger trains through a small country station and have a reasonable excuse. i have decided not to model any particullar part of the line, but rather my own amalgamation of stations and a vague scenery that relates back to real locations. this will allow me to model what i want whilst being able to have a real prototype to reasearch and follow making my railway more realistic than pure imagination allows. when looking through the book i found a track plan for gwr coalbrookdale. A station a few miles down the line from where i live which is long since abandoned. however i was amazed at how close my track plan was to this prototype. it has a u curved double mainline with a crossover and a siding that comes off and splits into two below the station. in reality this is a line that connects to the factories in coalbrookdale and a holding siding. however it is similar enough for me to base my engine shed sidings on. there are also two wagon sidings at the top left of the station. these fit in an empty area of baseboard i was struggling with ideas to fill. it was too cramped for anything non railway related. but a little large to simply be scenic right next to the station. i therefore descided to add two much smaller versions of these sidings on to my layout. I also ended up curving my engine shed sidings below the station. overall i am alot happier with this track plan as it is slightly busier, so it looks less like a giant track mat, whilst also not being too cramped. moreover it now bares enough resemblance to coalbrookdale that i can give the impression of the branch line whilst still keeping it my own. thank you for excusing my long ramble of progress so far. now im up to date i hope to upload phots as i go.

Almost there now! The next stage was installing ID backscenes. I recently installed a partition seperating the garage (layout room) from the lower workshop. to do this i used 4mm corrugated transluscent plastic. this allows light from the window in the layout area to pass into the workshop area. having finished this task i had several strips plus a full 4' by 8' sheet left over. This formed the perfect material for the backscenes as it is rigid and flexible. whilst being waterproof so it will never warp. The backscenes are about 17 inches tall above the serface of the baseboard. this means that a 15 inch backscene floats above trhe lower section, however most of the incline covers the gap and the raised section still has about 12 inches of backscene showing. i began by cutting the material so it curved gently around the layout and screwed it in place with wood screws. I then set about peeling the backing off and carefully applying the photographic paper. i made a few mistakes here. i applied the first photograph with the plastic flat and then tried to bend it back into shape. this caused major creasing. whilst it is harder to apply the backscene whilst upright it goes on with much fewer creases as there is no need to bend the backscene afterwards. I think the finished product looks great, theres a few creases and screws to strategically hide with scenery but that shouldnt be too much of an issue. having put up the backscene some final items arrived to finish laying track in the goods yard. I have altered this slightly from my origional plan. it consists of two main sidings that hold roughly 8 wagons each and a shorter siding for shunters and brake vans to be stored. i have also added a headshunt. This makes it more prototypical as it allows shunting with out fouling the mainline and also protects wagons from the incline. the sidings have been curved as this allows them to flow more easily around from the incline and gives a better appearence

sorry for the spam. i am trying to get the thread up to date. not far to go now! the next step was to lay the inline track, however i cant seem to find any photograps . i also motorised all of the points with seep pm1s and built a basic controll panel with a cdu and toggle switches. i am thinking of revissiting this again soon as the points are currently opperated from one corner, which doesnt feel too natural so i would like to move a panel front and centre. the layoout itself is DCC however i prefer analogue point control. i managed to pick up a second han Lenz LH100 for a very good price on gumtree, this works very well and i hope to add extra throttles in the future. to allow for this and to also allow control from multiple locations around the layout i have added express net 5 pin din sockets all around the layout. These , along with custom 3d printed brackets allow me to change location and then plug the throttle in.

finally track laying began. roughly 37 yards of peco code 100 flexible track was used. all the points are peco short electrofrog except a medium crossing pair between the mainlines at the station and a long curved point before the incline. I began laying the fiddle yard. its not much, just 2 siding per mainline, however there is plenty of rrom for expandability all points are wired for live frogs and switch blades. i then worked my way around laying the simple double mainlines with 2 sidings for an engine shed by the station.

with the main baseboards constructed i then set about building a lower section alowing for a river under the tracks. this ended up being extremely strong and over engineered, however it does slant downwards away from both baseboards. i may rectify this in the future, however for now it adds realism as mainlines are not flat and level in the real world. the final job before the baseboards were complete was to cut along the line of the incline with a circular saw (depth set to 9mm). i then raised the incline with wooden blocks. it is not perfect, however i have now been running trains up and down it with no issue. above you can see the completed baseboards with the bus wires layed out to test lengths.

some irregular modules where created allowing for the inline to have a more relaxed curve behind the station and then the baseboards were layed out before being raised on 80cm 89mmx38mm timbers. they were screwed together for allingment and then bolted with m8 bolts for final fit.

Having built many layouts throughout my childhood i had all but given up the hobby roughly 2 years ago. Now i am at university i have some more time on my hands again, aswell as a more stable income which helps. I recently decided to build a layout in my parents garage that i can work on in my long holidays from university. i will also be able to work on smaller projects such as building kits and detailing and weathering stock whilst i am at university. previous layouts had been poorley planned and built on scrap sheets of mdf from various sources over the years, however this time i wanted something better constructed and planned out. I designed a 7ft by 12ft loop of baseboards made of 2ft by 4ft and 2ft by 3.5ft sections which are bolted together so the layout is easily dismantled in a few years time. I began mocking up a track plan consisiting of a double mainline with an offscene storage yard, engine shed sidings and a raised goods yard up a 2%incline. this has recently changed to become more prototypical but i will talk about this later. with detailed plans in place, i came home from university and set about clearing space for the layout and construction began. i began by cleaning and sealing the floors and painting the walls (the walls need a second coat of descent paint. i only had wickes emulsion to hand) i then started constructing modules from 9mm ply and 63mmx38mm timber. To be continued ...