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Carl

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  1. Carl

    They're Taking Shape!

    By Carl,

    The baseboards are taking shape, perhaps a little more slowly than I would have liked but a couple of stupid errors have slowed things down a bit, the biggest of which was briefly thinking I was modelling in 1mm:1ft!
     
    I've started by concentrating on the areas which sit below track level, and especially on the area around the River Irwell. You can see an aerial show of the area as it is now on Google Maps.
     

     
    View of the River Irwell as it flows under the lines just west of the station. To the right of the river is Victoria Street. To the left, you can see the current state of the road you take to get to the car park which is where the central area of Manchester Exchange station used to be. There is a lot of work to do there yet.
     

     
    A view of the same area, but taken from the car park road, towards Victoria Street. I've since fixed the rather obvious slope of the wall above the tunnel, I didn't notice it until I saw the photo!
     

     
    And finally, a view from the car park, down the slope towards the river.
     
    To help show you what I'm aiming for, here are a couple of pictures I took on a visit to the station in April 2009. Both show the Arena which now dominates the station.
     

     

  2. Carl
    In the first of many you'll-never-see-it-at-Manchester-Victoria-let-alone-at-Manchester-Victoria-in-the-eighties posts, here are some Dapol Inter-City mk3s with added "Wrexham & Shropshire" branding. The decals are from Precision Labels and come in a pack with eight logos, which is ideal for a prototypical rake of three coaches. I've only applied the decals to one side of the coaches, so I can still run them in a chronologically correct livery for the layout.
     
    The coaches themselves are quite an improvement over the older Farish models, although what's with the Inter-City branding being so low on the sides? From normal viewing distance, it's more noticeable than all the nice things that the Dapol version has over the Farish ones. I suppose it'll have to be fixed at some point.
     

     
    Rake of Wrexham & Shropshire Blue/Grey Mk3s - Two SOs and one FO.
     

     
    Wrexham & Shropshire Blue/Grey Mk3 FO. The bowing is due to my camera.
  3. Carl

    The Track Plan (WIP!)

    By Carl,

    Missy has asked if I had a track plan for what I'd be building.
     
    Well, sorta!
     

     
    The background is a combination of a scan from "Manchester Victoria Station" by Tom Wray and screen shots of Google Maps. The scan represents Manchester Victoria in the 1930's, and Google Maps show the area post-Arena.
     
    The yellow lines are track I've worked out from photos etc were around in the 1980's, the light blue line I'm not 100% sure about.
     
    The green area is the approximate non-scenic area of the baseboards. As it stands with the 20' x 4' of baseboards I currently have, there will need to be some modification of the track-plan, especially at the western end to enable the track to get into the fiddle yard while maintaining a decent minimum radius. I do have room to extend each end by a foot or two, so I will probably end up doing that instead.
     
    I have traced most of the yellow into Templot, ready for the track to be built, but I thought that this version was easier to follow. I'll post the Templot .box file for the layout when I've tidied it up a little.
  4. Carl

    The First Sod Is Cut

    By Carl,

    After 9 months in the deciding, the deliberating, the procrastination and the planning, the first cuts into the baseboards were made today ready for my model of Manchester Victoria.
     
    I intend to model Manchester Victoria as it was in the late eighties, covering platform 11 through 17, from Cheetham Hill Road to the far end of where Manchester Exchange was, not too far from Deal Street signal box. The layout will be modelled in 2mm using Easitrac for the track, and although I'll be running N stock, it will be re-wheeled to 2FS standards. The bay platforms aren't in the current plan.
     
    What you see below are 8 of 10 4??? x 2??? baseboards, organised to make a total area of 20??? x 4???. There are two of the 4??? x 2??? boards still to be assembled. Very roughly, the back 2??? of the layout will be used for the fiddle yard, narrowing to about 10 inches behind the station.
     
    The cut-out areas represent parts of the landscape which are above or below track level.
     

     
    A view of the freshly assembled baseboards, taken from the east of the station.
     

     
    A view of the freshly assembled baseboards, taken from the west of the station, roughly where Deal Street signal box used to be.
     
    There isn??™t much more to see yet, but I??™ll post some close-ups of the area where the River Irwell flows under the line once it's at the point where it's easier to see what's going on. I need some timber to support the track, rather than the pile of DVDs I'm currently using!
     
    I've favoured modelling Manchester Victoria over Manchester Oxford Road and Wilmslow, I hope I've made the right decision!
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