Alcanman

As suggested above, Tees Yard WRD would fit into the space you have available. Here are some pics of the layout I built a few years ago and the track plan. (There is a thread on here but sadly the pics were lost in the RMWeb meltdown.)

Looks like an interesting little project. Perhaps an imaginary extension of the Blyth & Tyne north from Ashington to Warkworth. And Accurascale have just announced a NER 20 ton hopper.

Great announcement. Just wondering if the first 2 wagons behind J27 65828 are NER 20t coal hoppers. Photo is at Ashington Colliery in 1954.

Good to see Fort William back in action. Looks great.

The station building looks great. Just how I remember it on my visit in 1984.

Great photos. I also spent a couple of nights in Lake George on my 1994 road trip where I also saw Alco #1186.

Added more ground cover using Martin Welberg shrubs and the yard office is now in place.

Finished adding static grass and grass tufts to the left hand end of the layout.

Great photos of North Conway bringing back memories of my visit there in 1994.

This week I've been focusing and adding more ground cover using static grass and grass tufts.

More progress this week with a low relief warehouse added at the left hand end of the layout. A line of sea-moss bushes added, together with grass tufts and static grass to fill the gap between the 2 main warehouse structures.

The Cargill food processing plant has now been bedded in place and a few details added. A few weeds have also begun to appear.

More progress this week with ballasting finished.

According to Ian's book he states that his first circular layout was 'Glen Douglas' which he exhibited at York in 1976. This was followed by two more circular layouts, 'Saughtree; on the Border Counties line and then 'Longwitton' on the Rothbury line in Northumberland. Seeing these latter 2 layouts at local exhibitons in the North East were my introduction to Ian Futer's work. When 'Lochside' came along a few years later I was inspired to return to railway modelling and my interest in BR. Since then, I have followed his layouts with interest with 'Lochside and Newcastle Haymarket being my favourites. I've also followed Ian's path down the road of serial small layout building having built countless small layouts over the past 40 years. My current layout has only 3 points just like most of Ian's recent layouts.

Back in 2018 I visited the Polak UK shop which was located in the NYMR station yard at Pickering. It was a very strange experience. The shop appeared to be closed and there was a large german shepherd dog chained to an adjacent building. A young lady appeared and I asked her if the Polak shop was open. 'Yes', she replied and let me in after removing the dog who was barking loudly. The shop was full of Polak's excellent scenic products and I went away with a few purchases.

After some deliberation regarding final positioning of the track, I finally got round to painting it. My usual method of hand painting using Humbrol enamels. Rails are painted with a mix of 2/3rds 'Track Colour' (no 173) and 1/3rd 'Leather' (no 62) For the ties, I add more Track Colour to the original mix together with a little grey. Hopefully, I'll proceed with ballasting later this week.

Great looking layout. Richard New's trackwork and ballasting always looks good. Look forward to seeing more pics with B&A stock on the layout.

I've now completed wiring the layout. After testing, locos are running nice and smoothly. With the 2 main structures simply placed, its time to try a few switching moves. A few hours work is all that is needed with a small layout and then you can start running trains.

Good progress on the layout with track all laid and lightly pinned in place until final positioning. The 2 main structures have been re-cycled from previous layouts. Having started to read the info in the links supplied by Supaned, I've discovered that the R&N recently opened a Transload facility at West Hazleton adjacent to Humboldt.

Thanks. That's great, just what I've been looking for. Plenty of useful info.

For some time, I've looked at the Humboldt Industrial Park in West Hazleton PA as a potential subject for a small switching layout. Humboldt has several rail industries served by the Reading & Northern railroad along a 7 mile branch. Humboldt is far too large to model in it's entirety, so I have simply chosen a couple of customers - Cargill, who receive corn syrup cars and ship out candy products and International Paper who receive paper rolls in boxcars. I've also added a freelance transload track where covered hoppers are unloaded using augers. The track plan is my favoured 3 switch inglenook arrangement which I've found works well in the small space I have available. In fact, the plan is almost identical to my old 'Palmetto Spur' layout built over 10 years ago.

Although 55022 was mainly used on the North Blyth - Lynemouth local workings with the V type PCAs, it did few workings to Fort William with the Revolution type PCAs which can be seen being hauled by the class 66.

Note - They are the V type PCAs, not the ones being modelled by Revolution.

.... and the end of 'Alcan' trains on the Blyth & Tyne line.

I've also used a Humbrol no64 acrylic spray can on Wills 'cement rendering' sheets with a little weathering.