Oldddudders

According to my 1961/2 Ian Allan Combined Volume, I saw 4 of these ugly things, sadly not 92021. This model really does strike the right pose, though. Well done!

Weathering is looking good, Julian - as are the locos underneath, of course! Somercombe remains one of my faves on here.

So - one that runs, at last!

Your next challenge, should you choose to accept it, clearly has to be a turntable....

Third rail takes some extra modelling - and, no, I don't do it myself, although 40+ years ago I had a friend with outside third OO, in the days when this was a more common modelling standard than 2-rail.

I spent the first 25 years of my career on Southern Region, and to this day, the service density and complexity of the network remains brilliant. Now that RTR stuff in real quality is being made available, you can have a really fine layout representing all the things that make Southern Electric a success.

Just DO It!

Cross-country services from Pompey always were a nightmare, I seem to recall, being well-overloaded at peaks periods like this. Good luck, Julian!

Yup - that's a 4-EPB alright. Looks like it's just been through Grove Park washer, with Leading Railman Hawthorne doing the Exmoover application, as he did when I worked there in the 70s. Now, of course, if you had made it 5358, it could have run with the Bachmann 4-CEP, having been regeared to main-line speeds.

This looks like the Eastern Station Control Room, or was the last time I had anything to do with LB, many years back, and is between the Cannon St lines, off the end of Plats 1/2. Then, maybe now, it housed the announcer and bank of recorded announcement machines, although these are normally triggered automatically off the train describer. There is a definite reduction in width in the cladding at some point I think - when the new building was inspected by HMRI they found it to be out of gauge! Getting people onto the right platform at LB can be a big task. Has the Up Caterham terminated in LB Central, instead of carrying on to Charing X? If so, make sure the people waiting for the return trip on P5 are told in time to nip across the footbridge!

When the concrete floor was poured in building this box, the contractor used industrial driers to get it to go off. The signalmen in the adjacent old box, just across the tracks, were concerned that after dark they could see a "fiery dragon" in the new building! Please don't try this at home!

Certainly ambitious, as others have already said. You will be aware that stations like LB are themselves dynamic - any snapshot is out of date within a few years. It must be almost 40 years since the high-number platforms 17-19, I think, were taken out of use, and it is already 33 years since the climax of Operation London Bridge saw the new signalbox controlling an essentially new layout on the SE side. I was Traffic Regulator in the new box on the Easter Sunday morning of that momentous weekend. Now Thameslink seems likely to make equally dramatic changes, although some Government backsliding seems afoot perhaps. My message is that any changes to the model station forced upon you by constraints of space or cost are equalled in the prototype - give the scene a signature appearance and you will find we all see it for what it is. I hope you succeed!

Clerkenwell would make a very worthy model, but don't understimate the degree of complexity - nor the space you might find it begs for! You haven't mentioned an era, but I suggest the steam-diesel transition period would give the most fun - and empty your bank balance much more effectively! I first got to know the Widened Lines in the early 60s, and there were some steam workings, but early diesels like Cl 24 and 31 were also to be found, hauling old Gresley etc stock to and from Moorgate. The route through to the Southern was open until I think, 1961, so condensing tanks with freight could look very good, just bypassing the terminus you propose. I take it you will conveniently forget the Underground presence? Quite difficult to model convincingly, perhaps. I look forward to your further progress.

This flow had stopped before I got to the SE I think - 1973 - but I'm quite certain that when the Class 24s were on SE in the early '60s they will have worked freight on occasions in this area, so you're not really stretching things that far. I lived on the Central at that time, so didn't get far into SE territory, but did see 24s on the mainline at Tonbridge, as well as closer to home at Redhill. A green 24 is the best looking of all versions, IMHO!

You have indeed some way to go, but you appear to be drawing your own map before proceeding, which is a critical stage many of us kinda ignore. We buy the trains on impulse - then cobble up a place to run them! Make a resolution to post on the blog monthly, weekly, whatever is sensible given your spare time. That will ensure you feel committed to progress. We'll be watching!

Once again I am impressed with your work on Somercombe! The coal looks a whole heap (sorry!) better than anyone's plastic could do, and your painstaking methods of preparing and screening it is typical of why your layout looks so good. I do wonder, though, if pouring coaldust all over the track and road in the vicinity of the coal merchant would add realism? Such places, whatever the product, e.g. flour, cement, bricks, roadstone, always take on a hue of what is handled!

Well done also for embracing the blog idea from Day 1. Not every RMWebber has managed the transition at all!

By the way, I dropped JZJr a pair of Code 75 points in the post the other week - did the striking postmen ever actually deliver it?

Ian Dudley

I think the cement dust would adhere to the corrugations, but not uniformly, perhaps. This makes the essentially 2-dimensional medium rather difficult to adapt - i.e. paint. But, as we all know, the relatively trivial cost per download means you can try that first, have several goes if needed, all for the one fee (plus your printing costs), and then try something else if you can't get the required result.

I was sure the chainsaw looked familiar - RMWeb isn't overrun with such images! Very relieved that Somercombe is still intact, as it is a really decent layout with lots of super features & details!