MrSimon

Hi,

After a partial housemove and a period in storage I have managed to dig Gresby out and do some work on the wiring; it is temporarily wired up with all the sections and after a few choice words at the electrofrog points I managed to get it working and ran trains for the first time last night :-D

Is anyone any good at wiring in point motors?

Simon

This week I have been busy making the plasticard sides for the viaducts. The arches are pretty time consuming to build and I'm sort of wishing I had got something ready made/kit built but I'm sure it will be worth it in the end.

Here are the sections I have finished so far - they will all be finished blue and then weathered.

Here is the end of the viaduct under the arch. The walls will be finished in white glazed tiles with billboards. I will make a false bottom for the bridge so it doesn't look like ply. I will also remove the track-pins!


Here it is looking down. I haven't finished the coping stones for the top of the bridge piers yet; they take a lot of filing into shape! All the joins will need filling and hiding when I am ready to permanently attach the sides.

Lots still to do...

Simon

So at the weekend I was "persuaded" to bring forward my plans for an extension to Gresby, the extension will nearly treble the length and turn it into a round-and-round layout. I will put a copy of the plan on here when it is done but I will be continuing to work on Gresby while the extra boards are being built

I've been building some LMS coaches for my dad so I've not had time to do any work on Gresby but they're done now so I can get cracking with the viaducts and maybe even some wiring.

Simon

This evening I made a second mock up of the viaduct. I think the height is better this time and the coping stones look quite good. I had a look on the GCR leicester site linked in a reply above and tried to base the girder holder bit (I'm not sure what this is called, but its the bit where the girder bridge joins with the viaduct) on the GC types shown, its less ornate than Braunstone Gate bridge but the girder is smaller. In a later extension of the layout I'd like to make a bowstring style bridge.


Here is the end of the viaduct where it meets the girder.

Here is the viaduct, the height is much better this time. I cut out the brick-sheet where the arch is going to be but I didn't scribe any of the arches this time.

I'm pretty sure I'm going to paint the viaduct to represent the blue architectual bricks, as used on the GC London Extension but if I could see pictures of MS&LR viaducts in normal red brick I'd model them instead.

Simon

Progress on a Monday? Whats all that about? Today I made a mock up of the front of the viaduct to see if a) it looked right and I liked it. It was mainly made of white mount board with raised details made from bricky-plasticard.



I came to the following conclusions:
1) I had measured it to be 2mm too low, this will be fixed either by making it 2mm longer or by raising the ground by 2mm
2) The top of the viaduct looked a bit too low. I allowed 4ft from the for the parapet but when put on the baseboard with some stock on the track it looked a little low. I decided to add coping stones to the top which raised it by about 1.5mm but I think I might still need to add another 2mm.
3) The arches looked about the right width, but I'm not sure whether the tops should be moved closer to the track bed.



I'm not sure how I'm going to model the 5 or 6 rows of bricks forming the arches. Any ideas? I've got 15 to do (more if I build the extension) so I'm not mad keen on scribing the bricks individually.

Also, does it look Great Central (/MS&LR)ish? The prototype I paced out is the District/Picadilly line arches in Ravenscourt Park (London) with the width of the arch stetched by 50cm to make the arch taller - I used this viaduct because it was the closest one to my flat and it was raining.

Simon

Hi,

It is indeed Great Central based, but I hadn't really imagined it as being London Extension, more of a MS&LR line, maybe around Worksop/Mansfield but definately Sherwood Forest. I've got some pictures of the waiting room at Quorn to be derelict at the end of the platform but I hadn't thought of an old goods shed. I quite like the idea of a goods office but the kickback sidings are going to be hard standing for forklift loading of cargo wagons/steel carriers and fuel tankers. Maybe I could have the goods office derelict too?

Would the viaduct be built in blue brick as on the London Extension, local stone or red brick?

Simon

Hurry for payday! After a trip to modelzone (wish London had some better model shops) armed with points and trackpins I made the final push and laid the last of the track in the station throat, secotr plate and over the board joins. It will need tidying up a little and going over with the soldering iron but it should look quite good when its ballasted and weathered.

The main problem I encountered was that I had originally intended the sector plate to line up with the front main line and when I came to lay the track on the sector plate I found that it would have to line up with the rear track. I might still re-lay the sector plate so I can use both main lines but the present compromise is spurring me on to design the extensions I'm toying with to turn it into a roundy roundy.

In the long wait for payday I have been kept busy making a start on the big pile of brass coach kits my dad sent down for building in the summer. I have also been working on designs for the viaduct my track sits on, once I have cleared all the track-laying bumf from my desk I'll get a mock up put together.

See below some photos of the completed station throat.


Completed station throat. The poster tube has my spare track in - plenty left over for an extension!


close up of the track on the station board. The plasticard was to raise the finescale points slightly after everywhere in central London (both shops) had run out of normal peco short radius lefts. It will be secured and trimmed and ultimately be invisible.


close up of the sector plate board. I'm not sure whether I should be worried about the points being so close to the baseboard edges but it was the only way the cross-over could be fitted in. Its a very slow speed layout anyway so there shouldn't be too many issues.

Simon

Yesterday I remembered about RM web and decided it was time for an update, there has only been a half days work done on the layout since collecting the boards.

At Christmas I picked up the baseboards from the man who made the boards for me; here they are fresh from being made:

They are made with some sort of ply, glued and screwed together. I decided to swap the traverser for a sector plate, I think it should work.


Here is a shot under the track bed. When I've got the track laid and the point motors installed I will fix the trackbed down and access the wiring etc through the holes in the bottom.


Here is the station throat. I've run out of points and track pins so its not progressed any furthur than this.


Shot of the whole layout. And my dog.


I found a curved point recycled from my old layout and decided to have two kickback sidings instead of one. The front siding will be inlaid into concrete for loading, the rear will be protected by crash barriers and will be for fuel traffic. Last night I got bored and started designing an extension - but it won't be started for a while!

Hello everybody!

I first started this thread, and indeed building my layout (Gresby) in 2009.

Gresby is a small town in north Nottinghamshire, just outside Sherwood Forest. I have never decided whether the line runs from north to south or east to west, but it definitely connects Lincolnshire/Immingham/South Yorkshire, with the Midlands and the North West.

The line was built by the Manchester, Sheffield and Lincolnshire Railway which became the Great Central Railway, the station was opened the same time mas the London Extension was being built, following a standard design.

These days (roughly 1990s sectorisation to 2007) Gresby is served by Central Trains and Northern Rail stopping services, with Midlands Mainline and Transpennine Express services passing through. There is also a rail-served factory on the site of the old colliery exchange sidings.

The scenic part of the layout is (now) 9.5ft x 1ft, the total layout size being 12ft x 2.5ft.

This first post has always been a bit rubbish, but until I get round to properly drawing up a track plan etc I would probably skip passed it and read the rest of the blow-by-blow account of building the layout.

This includes:

• The early days as a shelf layout, laying the track and building buildings
• Its extension into a mainline exhibition layout
• The wiring
• Building more buildings to fill all the extra baseboard
• Scenery work
•  

I started putting rolling stock on here but I started a workbench topic (link below) so it didn't get too confusing.

Feel free to ask any questions, hopefully one day you'll get to see the layout at another exhibition!

Here are a pair of pictures from when the layout was first planned:

The original aim was to jam as much stock into a 2 platform suburban terminus as possible...