Eastwood L&Y; A Layout in a Weekend – Can they do it?

[John Lambert]

Thank you to all involved.
It's certainly inspired this new member to get on with some track laying.
Cheers,
John

[Ray5311]

This is a message from Captain Ray who was very proud
to have lead the crew of modellers on the Eastwood project (Never mind the title of Brigadier and the Brigade, we come from Portsmouth and have Naval Connections).

Unfortunately we were not able to keep to the plan
which was very optimistic. We did not make enough allowance for access rights to the layout, for all the different jobs, so as soon as track work was late on the critical path we had a problem.


In hindsight we should of made a design that allowed
more separate module to be made and finished them brought to the layout and stuck in place, ie the hills, the Station Road Ramp etc. (Hindsight is a wonderful thing where can we buy it??)

The problem was making the Slip Point, from Exactoscale
in the timescale. The kits are very comprehensive and detailed, but detail takes time. Points were easy and finished on time. We thank Exactoscale (Ken Newman ) for his support. The trackwork was made by Tony Sullivan and myself so blame me.

Our successes included the Baseboards, Richard Butler
and helpers managed a first class job as will be seen on the photographs.

The Fiddle Yards were made by Ian and Jonathan Buckie,
an expert job featuring a new design of cassette interface made from etched component designed, etched and assembles by the team.

Access to the layout was identified as a limiting factor
- you cannot do the scenery until the baseboards are ready etc. So Dave Bridges was given the job of build the signal first (off stage so to speak) before doing the scenery, also Jerry Offord had the job of making the Goods Crane before he could tackle the
retaining walls etc. Both these detail jobs were finished to schedule on Saturday the results are two find models that would grace the best of layouts.

The electrics were planned in detail, a temporary control
panel for now, but ready of final layout later. Thanks to Tony Hubbard.

The Point Motors are also a new design by Tony Witts
(maker of the Bouncer Signal Kits) these are made using small Servo Motors as supplied with the Bouncer Kits but with a new mounting panel and lever arm. Tony will be adding these to his range.

Another tip form Tony Witts was to use a New Flux
brush as sold by CSP Product but fill it with Butanone Solvent - this worked, well much easier to do track construction using this tool than the conventional paint brush and bottle.

The Scenery ran out of time because they were very
late starting but the hill structure and the embankment show how the layout will look when finished,

The platform and the ramp up from the road was the
work of Roger Davies who did a lot of planning to get the proportions right and to direct the baseboard team to make the framework right first time.


Stock Conversions were also happening in the background,
the Class 31 diesel was an easy conversion for Colin McCullam as tested, the J72 was finished and ran a short distance but will be finish for club night this week Dave Hawkins says. Colin was also called upon to give some mock up buildings, and the buffers.

Finally, Dave Smith was our front of house man and
Track Design Demonstrator. Dave did all the track planning, he had to make a few versions of the track plan and baseboard plan in the weeks before the exhibition, he was our Mr Fixit and extra pair of hands over the weekend.

What next, well we need another detailed planning meeting
or we can just have a chat in the pub on Thursday night as usual.

We will not now rush this project, as we have several
other commitments this year, our own club show on 13th March where we expect to show the part built layout. Then there is Scalefour North with the Ogden Layout in April, expoEM in May with Lee on the Solent Layout, Hope and Westcliff have commitments, Ogden
is out again in September. So we might set our target to bring a more finished layout back to Southampton in a years time. But we need to have the planning meeting first (In the Pub),

Thanks for all the comments and interest other modellers
have shown in this project. If any one is interested in the South Hants MRC and the local Scalefour Group in South East Hants please visit
www.shmrc.co.uk.

Thanks to the crew

[dcockling]

Hindsight is a wonderful thing where can we buy it??)

Hi Ray,

I think you'll find that Eillen's stock it:

20/20 Hindsight



All the Best
Danny

[derekrussan]

Sorry, 20/20 Hindsight is out of stock at present. Due to the supplier going into liquidation. I am reliably informed that they should have seen it coming.

Seriously though, I think the layout was a good effort by all concerned and shows just how much can be achieved in a very short time.


Derek aka Eileen the 3rd

[Ray5311]

Friends and Supporters

If you missed the layout being built at the Southampton Exhibition or you just want to see it again, you can. The layout will be on display at the Portsmouth Model Railway Exhibition at Admiral Lord Nelson School, Dundas Lane Portsmouth, on Saturday 13th March.

Also if any members are interested in helping us with this project give me a call or see me at the exhibition.

PLUS theres more, in the past there was the East Hants Area Group and there was the South Hants Model Railay Club. These amalgamated a couple of years ago when the East Hants Group dispanded. Severeal members have suggested that we should reform an Area Group for South and East Hampshire Area, this we have agreed to do based at the South Hants MRS. Colin McCallum agreed to be the Area Coordinator - then he decided to move to a new job out of area, so we have pursuaded Dave Hawkins (who has had a bit of experience with layouts like Great Bardfield and Kitehouses to his credit) to take the post, please look out for official notices. If you want to meet him, Kitehouses is at the show.

[Mark Tatlow]

Firstly, having taken a month to recover from the exercise (and that was just from writing up about it, others did the hard work!), can I repeat my thanks to the South Hants MRC for their efforts. An operational layout was achieved, albeit there were a few compromises that will be ironed out in the coming months.

Eastwood does have an invite to Scaleforum, for a future date to be confirmed, but for those of you that can not wait that long, it is intended that it will be there in part as a demonstration display at the South Hants MRC's annual show. This is this forthcoming weekend in Portsmouth - see http://www.shmrc.co.uk/nextexhibition.html for details. I should be there with my camera in hand, so I will post a few more photos on this thread next week.

Now, if these guy’s efforts pricked your consciences and made you think that you “really ought to get a layout done” then we have a further opportunity………… We have a couple of invites to the national shows to do a similar exercise, dates and locations are potentially open to discussion. The society would like to do this again, with a wide (and national) audience, so there would be support for a group that wished to step forward.

Any volunteers?

[Mark Tatlow]

As predicted, Eastwood was on static display at the South Hants MRC show in Portsmouth on Saturday.

Only a little progress has been made, given the proximity of the groups show with the end of the weekend at Southampton. As this is their main event of the year, I think we have to agree to that!

The layout was however up to the full extent that it was developed to do at Southampton:

Now on some temporary legs, with both fiddle yards in place.

There was also some work to make the fiddle yard actually link to the rest of the layout:

A view of the fiddle yard throat.

And also the J72 was properly finished:

The J72 has been finished and repainted - it was running about on Kitehouses.