Les Green

The office block behind the station has now been completed and installed on the layout. This was originally the main station building until the hotel was built. John will now complete the wiring for all the internal lighting.

Pete, This was the original.

Our fame spreads. The Norwegian magazine MJBladet features a ten page article on Liverpool Lime Street this month. Can't read it but it looks good! Plenty of photographs by Andy York and myself.

The ticket office at Lime Street Station had a barrier in front of each office window. Barriers were curved to form a squeeze point at the window so as to only allow one person at once to be at the window. The photo below shows the ones at Liverpool Exchange which were similar to those at Lime Street. We have had a model of these 3D printed by Shapeways. The print has ten barriers. The base plate has two holes drilled in. These make a jig to allow accurate drilling of the baseboards to accept the barriers.

These are our current bookings for the Lime Street Station layout. EUROSPOOR - Utrecht. Netherlands 3rd, 4th, & 5th November 2017 Festival of British Railway Modelling - Doncaster 10th & 11th February 2018 Tyneside Model Railway Exhibition - Gateshead 10th & 11th November 2018 Warley - NEC Birmingham 24th & 25th November 2018 Wigan Model Railway Exhibition - Wigan 4th, 5th, & 6th October 2019

A couple of photos of the model all ready to run on Liverpool Lime Street layout. Smokebox number plate now dropped to correct location! Just needs weathering now.

Latest addition to the stock of Lime Street. A Brassmasters Royal Scot.

The office block is now complete and ready to go to Rob Harrison for weathering. The model is basically made from three components: The outer shell of the building, The insides, complete with photos of office internal details. This component will eventually be wired for lighting. The windows, complete with curtains. These layers slide into the outer shell before the internal section slides and locks into position to complete the model.

Saturday Telegraph!

Stage 2 of the office block painting.

The office block is all ready for final painting.

A trial fit of the new office block this morning. It fits OK, just a few modifications required. The small window is for one of the cameras to see trains on the back platforms.

Yes the springs should be compressed but to do it that needs a lot of weight in the centre of the loco chassis. My motor is in the way and there is not much room inside the lightweight resin boiler/firebox. I have contacted Brassmasters previously regarding the steering springs in the front bogie. Their response was total rubbish. I am about to do the Brassmasters Princess and I have learned a lot doing this Scot. Probably do it with beam compensation on the leading and centre axle. Problem with that is being a sprung chassis the axle neutral position is at the top of the horn block slot. Compensation needs the axles to be in the centre of the slot. If I do that the loco footplate may be a little high. Could just do it solid!!!!

Ah yes. I have done the LMS jackshaft diesel shunter using that method. It worked well.

True. The number plate is too high. I may be able to move it at this stage. Thanks. CSB System?

Well. The Brassmasters Royal Scot is almost finished. I was not happy with this kit at all. The balance seemed all wrong. Being a resin boiler and firebox there was not enough weight in the model to compress the springs. The motor is mounted on the central axle and is unsprung weight. Getting weight in the firebox and cab is almost impossible to balance the model. I have now fixed the rear axle and added weight to the front to try to bring the model down on the springs. Not sure if the finished model will run properly. We will see.

Interesting photo showing some detail I hadn't seen before. The windows in the arches are quite ornate. Luckily for me that part is not modelled. The back wall is just a blank wall as it is at the back of the layout.

The next addition to the stock of locomotives for Lime Street. A Brassmasters Royal Scot in 1947 LMS livery. Not quite finished yet, but almost. It makes a change from modelling hotels etc!

The roof of the office block has now been slated. I used a different technique to the hotel this time and the result is far better. The slates are basically photo sheets from Smart Models. The versions as bought have thick white cut lines spaced at 6mm intervals. With Photoshop I extracted one 4mm strip, repeated it at 4mm intervals to give me a full A4 sheet with no marked cut lines. On the hotel I printed the sheets onto self adhesive photo sheet. This is not a very good adhesive and a lot of the strips lifted once fitted to the hotel roof which need a lot of careful application of superglue under the slate. Also the cut lines were white paper. OK I could have used a felt tip pen to hide the white paper, but on hundreds of strips? This time I used craft mount spray adhesive to glue the photo sheet on to a backing of grey card. Then the back of the card had 3M double sided adhesive sheet applied before the whole sheet was laser cut into 4mm strips. This gave the strips of slates thickness and the edges were burned dark brown. The MDF roof had score marks layered in to the surface to aid the location of the strips. The result can be seen in the photos below. Far better than the hotel roof! Note that the slate spacing tapers towards the roof apex. A feature often seen on large buildings to give the impression of an even larger roof.

The model of the old station building which is located behind the hotel and behind the northern section of the station roof. Painting of the model will be the next stage. A few liberties have been taken with this model as we have no photos of the rear face of the building, only the front face. For the model I have assumed that the rear is similar to the front. A wrong assumption I know. but if we find sufficient photos we could always rebuild it! Detail of the laser cut and laser engraved MDF. Also shown are the rather complex decorative strings made from laser cut MDF, laser cut Rowmark and dolls house picture rails and cornices! It is our intention to print the insides of this building. Much research will be needed to draw the interiors of waiting rooms, left luggage offices, general offices etc, all in 1947 period! Note the pictures hanging in the right hand office. One is picture of the model station. The other is looking seventy years into the future, a futuristic tilting train. Whatever next!

Except the station hotel at Glasgow is about four times the size of the Liverpool station hotel!!

Mainly because the information board was put there long before the hotel was built. We are thinking of doing something about it to make the hotel more visible.

No and no! It is back home again and it doesn't have a box yet!!

And today, after only three days modelling the station building went for a trial fitting to the layout! One improvement in the construction technique when compared with the hotel model was the provision of 2.1mm slots and tabs for the 2mm MDF. The hotel had 2mm slots and tabs which needed a bit of work prior to assembling.

Here we go again, another large building structure, the original station building on the North side of the station.. The parts arrived from Chris Denning's CD3D Modelmaking late last week.