Scalefour Forum

Hi All

This summer we have been good with the wood again and now have all the baseboards done for the station area - wolves tunnel to london tunnel. this is how it looks so far and the following constitutes about a third of the layout whole.



view from the london end



view from the wolves end




views from what will be the front (public side)

Cheers

Jim

Hi JSW

That is going to take a small army of staff to take to shows

Nice to see some progress.

Keep at it

Tim

jim s-w wrote:This summer we have been good with the wood again and now have all the baseboards done for the station area - wolves tunnel to london tunnel. this is how it looks so far and the following constitutes about a third of the layout whole.

That's nothing like Birmingham New Street [1] : it's not dark, damp and dingy, smelling overpoweringly of diesel fumes and wet concrete...

Great work! I'm intrigued to see how much of the "character" you can add

Paul Willis

[1] says an occasional lurker on BNS platform[2] ends in the mid-80s
[2] I think that it was platform 3 that the trains for Rowley Regis always ran into...

merlin46 wrote:Hi JSW

That is going to take a small army of staff to take to shows

Nice to see some progress.

Keep at it

Tim

Indeedy Tim. Good job I have you lot aint it?

Jim

jim s-w wrote:Indeedy Tim. Good job I have you lot aint it?

Jim

Ah but Jim, you have to earn 10 brownie points first with us - errr, by actually packing CR and VY into and out of the van...?

Cheers, Tony

Thats Ok Tone

Ill do the packing stuff for New Street - you chaps can just put the stock on and run it! LOL

Cheers

Jim

Hi all

Speaking of packing…

What follows is how the layout is stored and moved.


Shows 2 boards packed into their ends. Gives a glimpse of the boards construction too. The odd shapes mean the end packing sometimes has to take the form of some interesting sculptures.


one of each end board is fitted with these rubber wheels so that each pack can be easily moved. The packs measure 5ft by 3ft 3 by 2ft 6 and are far to heavy to be comfortably lifted by 2 people hence the wheels.

I know this will be obvious stuff to many on here but I dont see layout packing shown that often on forums and thought someone might find this useful

Cheers

Jim

Very impressive baseboards - are you going to provide some 'bottom' protection for the boards to cover the electrics when in transit, given the wonderful weather we current have.

I look forward to seeing the fruits of your labour at Leatherhead.

Hi All

Time for another update, If you remember i did a mock up of work so far a while ago, things have moved on a little

The first few shots are taken from my eye height and give a good idea of what you will see when its all finished. (I am 5ft 9 BTW)





Following are views more akin to the real place






Applogies for the scruffy background!

Jim

Really starting to take shape Jim, and commendable rate of progress on such a large project

Rod Cameron wrote:Really starting to take shape Jim, and commendable rate of progress on such a large project

Most certainly, excellent work Jim.

Nick

Thanks chaps

Made decent progress today on getting the walls for the public side built and installed. Of course you people aint going so see them from your side of the layout but thats not the point is it? :tongue


A class 108 emerges from under the bridge. The new walls are in the background - They need weathering yet!


A couple of shots of 50 033 on a short (5 coach) TPO




Jim

Hi All

Had a few days to chip away at stuff on the layout. The following are progress so far, I left the road off so that you can see!



I have now got all of the platform ramps in for this end of the station and nearly all of the edges. Also made a start of the arched wall that is located on plaforms 2 and 3.



This is the view I get!



And this is your view.



Finally installed some of my etched troughs and started on ballasting, If I do a bit now and then its not too much of ball ache!

Cheers

Jim

It's all getting rather spooky

Whenever I go to BNS I look around and think how much like your layout it is.....of course their version is much darker

Great work Jim

All the Best
Danny

Hi Danny

I know its hard to believe but the station is very clean these days, by comparrison! In the 80's it came with a huge extra serving of grim!

Cheers

Jim

Hi All

More work today. Anyone bored yet?

Cheers

Jim

jim s-w wrote:
More work today. Anyone bored yet?

No Jim, keep em coming!

Hi Jim

Good to see the progress made at the RMWeb day yesterday, and to see a fair amount of stock on it for context!

Rod Cameron wrote:Good to see the progress made at the RMWeb day yesterday, and to see a fair amount of stock on it for context!

Shame I couldn't make members day as I would have liked to have seen New Street in the flesh. Excellent work on the layout and thank you for posting the new photos, just from looking on different peoples threads I have learnt a great deal in preparation for Horrabridge.

Nick

Hi All

been doing a little fettling to the layout after the RMweb members day.

The 2 double slips that hadn't been fettled at the members day (ran OK I thought - considering!) have now been fettled to make sure they are reliable.

Also thanks to the advice of Mr Dell (thanks Andi) I installed a stop light in the dock. A simple surface mount LED mounted onto a tube (plus a resistor and diode) was all that was required.



Cheers

Jim

Hi All

Even if I do say so myself I am pretty chuffed with how my street signs came out. A couple of pics of then 'in situe' (with, you guessed it, more of THAT lorry!)




Now this really dates the layout to 1987 or after. Because 1987 was the year that 12 metal horses appeared between New Street and Wolverhampton. They were done by a Sculptor called Kevin Atherton and were entitled the Iron Horse (I assume that relates to the early name for trains). Anyway theres one on New Street so I stuck it on the last etch, 47088 provides the background.



Cheers

Jim

Hi All

Pictures of recent progress on the London end for you. The complicated stuff on this board is done - just a couple of catchpoints to finish and plain track now.





Cheers

Jim