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. 

1 hour ago, Squirrel Rail said:

Hi Jack - looks tight at home on Wratting Road - great scenic work really shows it off! Cheers Jerry

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. 
 

11 minutes ago, pitbull1845 said:

Welcome to RMweb, 

I've been subscribed to your YT channel for a while now, really like what you've done with the space available. 

The layout looks great.

 

Cheers 
Scott

 

 

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 

27 minutes ago, brushman47544 said:

 

Superb all round, but could the Class 90s push during the period they were converted to 90/1s? I only remember seeing them hauling until they were converted back to 90/0s

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

7 hours ago, 'CHARD said:

 

I would normally cut the pictures from my reply, but I'm deliberately not on this occasion, as I want to emphasise how good your layout looks - can we please see more of Wratting Road!  Only 2 posts - layout thread would be grand!!!!!

 

Thanks for the kind words. 
 

I’ve just started a thread in ‘layout topics.’ 

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!