SouthernMafia

Apologies if this has been noted already but I haven't had a chance to read this thread in detail yet. I managed to watch the dispatch procedure at Southampton Central today as I was curious to know how they did it following this post. It's basically a two man dispatch simulating CD/RA equipment, one dispatcher stands by cab, and second by stairs towards rear. Rear dispatcher gives first tip to front dispatcher, who relays to Driver. Driver closes doors, then rear dispatcher gives second tip to front man, who gives green flag to driver. All this while the OBS looks on...

Good to see you and the layout again Ian, some motivation to get Portland up to the exhibitable standard of yours before October !

I have given this some thought and similarly thought about extending the track, however 3 main reasons for not doing so: 1 - the platform can currently take a loco plus 6 coaches, however the fiddle yard can only take take loco plus 5 coaches. So a fair bit of alteration would be required to run a 7 coach train on the layout. 2 - i don't want to fill every spare gap with track - there is already a lot of track and it would be nice to actually have some scenery, although that does actually mean building it ! 3 - i cant be bothered to wire any track to the new board I am thinking about extending the middle siding slightly onto perhaps a small loading dock of some description, but that would be the only road to be extended if I choose to do so.

Thanks Peter, it's certainly an iconic and fondly remembered train and one I've always been keen to model. I have a collection of Reggie Rail Mk1s but with the Mk2s coming out it was a no brainer, despite their rather hefty price tag. Luckily I'm a believer in if you want something you pay for it, and I also support my local model shop in the process (AC Models Eastleigh - a superb model shop). The TSOs will likely sell out quicker than the BFKs (hence no BFK purchased just yet) so best to get in early - the coaches weren't even out their delivery box at AC! I've got a few 37s.... Bachmann 370xx RfD (unnumbered) Bachmann 37013 Mainline Bachmann 37035 Dutch Bachmann 37057 BR Large Logo Bachmann 37114 EWS Bachmann 37258 Dutch Bachmann 37406 RfD Bachmann 37410 Transrail Bachmann 37411 EWS Bachmann 37421 Colas Bachmann 37506 Red Stripe Bachmann 37514 Rf Metals Bachmann 37892 Rf Petrolium ...so pick a suitable candidate! Imagine 37406, 37410 and 37411 have all been based at Cardiff at some stage in their careers? Also able to replicate this rather outrageous working! https://flic.kr/p/fGFZ7S Ian J, I noticed this too and will certainly think about modelling it. Trouble is it means loosing an NSE Mk2 TSO which could impact on my WoE rakes....! Other Ian, thanks for your kind comments. Sadly I didn't make the thumper car, only painted it, but I have suggested it to my talented Winchester Railway Modeller colleague about doing a few, and seeing what they would go for on eBay! We have 1 on order from a fellow modeller to go into Connex, not sure how I'm going to be painting that faded yellow livery though!

A train I've always wanted to recreate, and thanks to some new Bachmann Mk2s released this week it can now be done properly: 37258 awaits departure from Portland with 2V93 17:00 Portland - Bristol Temple Meads service.

Nothing exciting to report but just a view of Reading electrification works not often seen.

Notes on the buildings and creosote works from a fellow WRMer.. "Several starts were made on the big creosote pressure vessel building with various plastic H sections & I beams, but these turned out to be too bendy to support an open sided building. Brass has now been used for the permanent (?) shell, with Eldavo Renshaw 3D printed roof trusses added on top. The smaller/ similar buildings at either end will house the sleeper hole boring and chairing machinery, albeit cut down to fit the available space. Tony P was asked to check if there was room to include the narrow gauge pointwork into/out of the creosote pressure vessels, but decided it was quicker to just build them; and yes, they fit perfectly. Next up will be a proper version of the current cornflake packet mock up of the Machine Shops seen at the Totton end. The blue foam creation will eventually morph into an overhead crane that transverses the whole yard, used for furtling among the stacks of sleepers next to the offloading point on the quay; and for shifting lengths of rail in/ twiddly bits of finished pointwork out of the Machine Shop. ….and then there are the sawmill, timber drying shed and large foundry buildings at the other end of the scenic section to start thinking about."

As mentioned, focus has been primarily on wiring the layout up - I dread to think how many miles of wire have been used! The layout does work, and we have just about had a train run round in DC, however a few niggles with DCC currently which Dave is fiddling with. Here's a few images of the FY control inside bits, and our main scenic side panel: (The guagemaster controller is a temporary solution, hence the messy looking croc clips)

In the central area of the layout, work has been focused on building placement and a number of Kelloggs boxes have been moving around the layout, occasionally changing shape each week. Some more substantial progress in this area has taken place recently, and we are starting to see some final structures of the Creosote works arriving. Some detail on these to follow. The blue polystyrene mimics the traverser crane. At the Southampton end of the layout, our clubroom daughter board has been constructed with track laid. At shows each of the front scenic boards has a daughter board attached to it (similar is size to this one) to give added depth to the layout. Most of it will be water and quayside stuff. When the layout goes to a show, this board will be replaced by another around twice the size and the sidings will continue at a more aesthetic angle. The large space inbetween the sidings and the "elephant" lines (no idea why they're called this - effectively the lines that now run into Southampton Maritime) will be a large foundry, big enough to disguise the scenic break here: Lastly, the Southampton end fiddle yard approaches: The lines on the extreme left curve round into the Branch fiddle yard, then another diamond further up provides entry into the Freight fiddle yard. Note access is also provided for trains to/from the Elephant road into this yard, allowing us to simulate the line as a through freight road.

Well it's been 2 years since our last update, so we'd better give you one! Firstly, the layout is due to go to the Brockenhurst show this May, very much as a work in progress (in the same way that my layout Portland went last year) and we'd like to thank Andy and the Brockenhurst team for allowing us to bring a far from finished layout along to a local show for a good test. We are a very aware that there is A LOT to do, but we will soldier on and if anything a date in the diary is good motivation to crack on and get it looking and operating as presentably as we can. (this is exactly what I needed last year and for anyone interested in what Portland looked like at the same stage this time last year 4 months before the show, take a look at my Portland thread) Now, the layout. Some will think not a lot looks different in 2 years! This is because the bulk of the work has been focusing on getting the layout operational. This mainly involved wiring up the fiddle yard, installing nearly 50 servo motors, and building the control panels. Dave Renshaw (eldavo) has been the mastermind behind all this - we have the capability to operate in both DCC (NCE gear) and DC, all of which is very complicated - although he tells us it's just two wires....some pics and hopefully some detail from Dave to follow. Scenery wise, some major work has taken place at the Totton end and around the actual causeway to get this starting to look a bit more scenic-y. The fabulous laser-cut bridge kindly built by one of our members has been sunk and installed in place. It sits across a board join so is removable. Behind this can be seen the original 1700s built 5 arch bridge, in the early stages of construction. Some history on the bridges here We have also constructed the road (what is now the A35 Redbridge flyover and Totton Bypass) and construction of the bridge over the railway, the view from which is this one: Obviously we have had to curve the line here when in reality it is straight but there's a barn wall in the way so we had no choice ! Note the cutaway board bottom left to accommodate our 0-gauge roundy-roundy which runs under the Totton end of the layout. The "Romsey board" has been constructed and now sits in place. This is the tightest radius on the layout at 28" and 30" respectively. At the Totton end fiddle yard, some fancy pointwork has been completed, and a rudimentary turntable to turn any steam locos in the freight and branch areas of the yard. Quite a bit of shunting will be required in the freight fiddle yard, and trains can access these lines from any of the 6 entry or exit points of the layout Above you'll notice the gantry over the fiddle yard, labelled as follows: Green 1-4 Down Mains Red 5-8 Up Mains Blue 9-10 Freight Receptions (Soton End - mirrored in foreground with Totton End - so 4 roads here) Yellow 11-15 Branch (2 Down, 1 Reversible, 2 Up) More to follow...

Thanks for the link, really useful. I'm sure I've seen a photograph of a TC at Cardiff Central so presumably they got onto a few '89' services at times.

When were 4TCs painted into NSE, how many were there and what services did they operate on? Finally when were they withdrawn? I have an NSE one preordered but I keep debating whether it should be a blue grey one. Sadly I cannot afford 2 !

Some progress today. Firstly one of those niggly little jobs that needed doing after some re-wiring work meant the fiddle yard board came out of hibernation, so thought it was about time I did it - holes for couplings: Some thin foam will be added on the buffer side to soften the blow from all that dodgy shunting going on. Next up, drilling some holes to make board 5 as described above actually do what it's supposed to do. Here's boards 1, 4 and 5 all bolted together as if going on the road: ...and here's board 5 in position ready for scenic attention and no doubt an ever changing plan to take place. Note make-shift dodgy trestle in form of expensive easily damaged trains...

Out of interest for anyone who has resprayed a Bachmann 47 into Colas, what suitable donor models are there? Am I correct in thinking 47365 would work?

Thanks for clarifying. I just wish you were the ones selling the Colas 47 for that price!

..yes so the question is asked why are Derails selling their Ltd Ed for £23 less than the others, they should all be the same price surely.

Great news on the Colas 47, expect I'll be having one. But just one observation on discounting, Derails have 47832 available at £131.70 but all the other limited edition models on Invicta, Hattons and Rails are at the full whack of £154.95....how does that work!?

I don't think my eyes were deceiving me but looks like your gantry has come down at Didcot Mr Stationmaster! I'll recheck on my way back later, wasn't really paying attention at 125mph...

Thanks Zomboid for your thoughts, I had been thinking along the same lines, hence building a full 3D CAD model to bring my ideas to life. There are some lovely buildings in Portland and around the Purbeck area so lots of inspiration to draw upon. Thanks Rob for the tips, I shall investigate further.

Tonight on the night shift at Reading.. Work on platforms 1 2 3 7 and 8.

Well the plan seems to change by the day based on how much time daydreaming I have on my hands. I forgot to mention a while back an additional board was built to assist with transporting Portland to exhibitions in the future: Board 1 is 5ft long, boards 2 and 3 are both 4ft6 long and board 4 is about 3ft2 ish. Odd shapes because of the room the layout was built to sit in. When the layout goes to exhibition, boards 2 and 3 sit on top of each other. However board 4 is obviously shorter than board 1 by 1ft10ish, so a smaller adapter board, board 5, was built which bolts to board 4, and then the board 4 and 5 ensemble sits on top of board 1. Clever eh. Whilst coming up with this hugely innovative idea....I thought why not make board 5 a small scenic board for use at the show as well. So at shows board 5 will sit on the other end of board 1,as shown in the image above. The reason this is important now is because I've suddenly twigged I needed to work out what was actually happening on board 5 to establish how the station building will be built and where it will sit. Anyway, bearing all this jibberish in mind, I've been playing around with some ideas in my head, and in SketchUp, and this is the latest "plan" - a combination of Portland and Swanage: The lamppost has been put in as a reference, and everything is to scale in 4mm:1ft so I'm getting a good feel for how the layout might actually look. The Swanage building will have a canopy as per the real thing which will fill the wider area of the platform, up to the back of where the bay platform ends. The Portland building is now too big, as I've just copied the stretched model I was working on into this file, so will need to be rebuilt to more correct measurements. Since the Portland building now sits as it did in real life, I can now model a station forecourt much better. Of course, all this is entirely fictional, I'm not sure a station of this size might have contained such a large amount of infrastructure, but modellers licence and all.

Wires now up on Platforms 13, 14 and 15 at Reading to some extent, 13 looks like it's missing some bits.

I don't know why I didn't think of it before but there appears to be a much easier prototype to base the building on which still exists today and is pretty much the same layout! Well it doesn't look like this anymore of course but Swanage would fit the criteria well. The more I look at rehashing the original Portland building the more I don't like it! I came stuck when thinking about how the canopy would fit in against the building. *continues to ponder*

This is the sort of plan for how the building will sit:

Design work continues on the station building. Research has been completed and I've decided to base the building as much as I can on the original to give it that Portland feel. The model will be enlarged with 2 extensions either side, incorporating a welcome hall/ticket office area at one end, and toilets at the other. The end product will hopefully give the impression of bits being added to the original building, rather than trying to convince anyone that it was always built that big. Furthermore the building will sit very differently to how it does here, with the 'front' ie roadside actually being the platform facing side on the layout, and the main entrance coming in from the side, purely because of how I've built my layout. Links for the research and photos below http://www.geoffkirby.co.uk/Portland/680735/ http://www.disused-stations.org.uk/p/portland_first/ Not my photos obviously, as I wasn't around in 1860, 1904 or even 1966 ! But my thanks to the authors and photographers of the websites above for having these available for reference. I'm debating with myself about going down the laser cutting route, but the more I think about it the more I'm on the fence as the building is generally pretty simple and will be clad in Portland stone sheets available from Wills, so other than the basic shape I'm not sure what laser cutting will add. However, there are a number of details which would benefit from laser cutting which need to be added after. Quite enjoying using Sketchup, probably too much and should think about getting the damn thing built instead.... This is the country end fictional extension which is now the main entrance with automatic doors. The London end extension has yet to be modelled as I'm debating what form it will take. Starting adding some fancy bits too which would be handy on the laser cutter.