BelsteadLane

Wratting Road Layout Tour P2 Sorry for the large gap and inconsistent posting. Some more photos now but showing the least interesting places still yet to be made, but I’ll say the future plans for them all. FL Depot Facilities This will be the facility area for the Freightliner depot that will be accessed via the headshunt. The area will have an inspection pit, fuelling points, fuel wagon storage siding and a spare loco siding. A few changes need to be done to the track plan, and the buildings and facilities still need to be sourced. Mainline Continued The mainline continues with the depot’s reception line running alongside making the number of running lines 3. I want to have a road over rail bridge somewhere along the bend and in the corner of the layout on this side, have an ohle feeder station and relay room. I plan to make another embankment next to the mainline and have a road scene with low relief buildings roughly where the bowls in the above are. This will lead to the bottom photo which is where the other scenic break will be - marked by where the ballasting stops. Another road over rail bridge will be here giving a nice sizeable length for a road. Fiddle Yard/Non Scenic Section The fiddle yard isn’t big at all and certainly isn’t interesting to look at. There’s no points for the mainline so trains can run round and round with minimal issues and minimal chances of derailing. All operation interest goes into the depot so it keeps it nice and simple for me to operate. The photo I took the other night of the fiddle yard is the wrong orientation annoyingly so apologies for that. I hope nobody injures their necks! Hope this gives an idea of my layout size and a bit of an insight to what WR will be. It won’t ever be anything amazing, I’ll always have a ‘my first layout’ approach to it, but I’m using it to build up my skills up and when I come round to build my next layout, it’ll hopefully be something special! feel free to ask any questions you may have Cheers, Jack.

Thanks. I’m sure I’ll be buying some more goodies from you in the future!

048 next to one of her Triple Grey sisters - 047.

Squirrel Rail 90048 is now in the Wratting Road Fleet. Looks spectacular running under the wires. Currently running in before a change of address and I’ll change the pantograph cv’s as well. top work Jerry. And you’ll be happy to know the cab light does in fact work. Might have just been the track I brought round to test it on.

Cheers Scott!

Wratting Road Layout Tour: Heres some pictures showing a bit more of the layout and as you can see, it really is very much a WIP with lots of baseboard yet to cover! I’ll give a quick but detailed explanation describing the pictures. Tunnel Scenic Break The same photo as in the first comment on the thread. This is one of the scenic breaks and entrances to the non-scenic fiddle yard (and i use that term very lightly) it’s a simple two track mainline. This area is inspired by the south/countryside end of Ipswich Tunnel. One day I would like to scratchbuild a more accurate looking tunnel porter for my next layout but for now the Peco tunnel mouth with weathered brick sheets does the trick. The white backboards will have a backscene on eventually - something I will do soon (and probably should have done much earlier on in the layout build!) Looking in the other direction from behind the scenic break backboards: This is one of my favourite places to stand and watch trains run by. From this view, you get a better view of the disused signal box on the right hand side, and of the sidings for the FL train crew depot. With the signal box, you’re probably thinking why I’ve put one there - I’ll get to that later. FL Depot Sidings Here’s the stabling sidings for the Freightliner depot. These are made up of 4 sidings which are the 4 tracks in the centre and on the left. The track furthest to the right is the headshunt, what locos use to reverse and access the depots facilities - this area is yet to be built hence the pause in ballasting. This still needs some driver or staff figures, depot lighting and buffer stops to be added until I’m happy with the area. You can just about make out the relief siding on the left by the white buffer stop, which is outside of the depot boundary. The relief siding is/will be electrified so this is where the FL electrics will be stabled to await further duties or to be shunted/propelled into the depot by a diesel. Mainline The relief siding I mentioned above is the line on the left (the overgrown one) and the two other tracks are the main running lines. You can see the two sets of points to access the FL depot - The idea of having two access lines came from the FL depot at Ipswich which does the same thing. All that unballasted track off centre too the left is the Depot’s facility area. This is as far as scenery has come so far on the layout. I’ll post the more boring bits next on a different comment at some point!

Thanks 1722 and Scottish Exile for the lovely comments

I’m not sure on that one, sorry. 90/1s were dedicated freight locos iirc so quite possibly you are correct. my 90128 is currently away being renumbered to 028 and being weathered and detailed up into its ‘privitisation’ condition. Those Virgin mk3s aren’t in that livery anymore either! It’s a pretty old photo but the only good one of 128 I had

Thanks for the kind words. I’ve just started a thread in ‘layout topics.’

Hi All. New to RMWeb. I thought I’d start a thread showing my WIP layout - Wratting Road. This is the first layout I’ve ever built after getting into the hobby a couple of years ago. It measures roughly 10ft x 8ft so it’s not a big layout but for a starter layout, it’s perfect. It’s OO gauge, DCC and Modern Image. The layout is a fictional location but is based on the GEML around the Ipswich area and everywhere on the layout takes or will take inspiration from places around the East Anglia region. The tunnel area is inspired from the south (countryside) end of Ipswich Tunnel for example and I have a disused signal box inspired by the one at Bishops Stortford on the WAML. The main point of interest will be the Freightliner Train Crew Depot in the centre of the layout. With other small scenes and points of interest scattered around the place. Being centred around Freightliner, typical locos seen will be 66s, 70s, 86s, 90s and an 08 shunter. However, other freight TOCs will still pass through, along with Abellio Greater Anglia passenger trains and DRS Class 37 short sets. Intermodal workings are my biggest interest on the railways and always have been since I was a kid, so Wratting Road is and will be heavily intermodal orientated. Although, I do fully intend to have Hoppers and Tanker wagons as well for variation. More information to follow. I do have a Facebook Page, Instagram account and a YouTube channel too, so feel free to check those out in the mean time.

Bachmann 90s are my favourite model. Very hard to beat in my opinion and certainly have raised the bar. He’s some of mine running on Wratting Road

That 90 looks superb. Loving the attention to detail already on the model. How much are you thinking of selling it for once complete as I’m interested! Thanks!