Caravan Progress

I've now completed building all 6 caravans. The picture shows them loosely placed. Once I've laid some more grass they will be levelled and attached properly.

It's cold in that loft!

The recent weather has rendered work in the loft something short of comfortable! I managed an hour on Friday before I gave up and retreated to the warmth of the house. I was able to spend some time working on the pannier, 7752. I had thought she was running badly because of bent / damaged axles, but upon deeper investigation I discovered that the chassis was bent! This is an old Mainline model that used a split chassis - one half of this was slightly bent near the motor mounts. I don't know how this happened, but after some brute force it looks pretty straight. She still doesn't run as smoothly as I'd like her to - but it was good enough for a couple of trial laps with the breakdown train.

Hannerton New Street Layout

I've cleared the board where Hannerton Station will be. Using the points and track I already have and a couple of paper templates. My initial thoughts was to have 6 through roads and a turntable. See the original plan here. However, six through roads aren't going to work as each subsequent line becomes shorter and shorter, leaving the last 2 loops practically useless!

The turntable won't fit either - having laid the paper template for the turntable out on the board it's much larger than I was expecting. I was planning to use the Peco turntable, but it's simply too big. So a re-think was necessary.

Plan A - 6 loop lines and a turntable.

So after some shuffling around, plan B was born. The number of loop lines are reduced to 4, and the remaining area is sufficient to fit 3 sidings in long enough to take a full train. There's also room for a couple of small sidings for storing locos.

Plan B - 4 loop lines, 3 sidings and 2 short spurs for loco storage.

Hannerton New Street revised plan.

Photoshopped 47

Virgin class 47, 47 805 'Pride of Toton' rounding the curve away from Essington station towards Painton Viaduct. This photograph has had real sky added and has been tidied up in Photoshop.

A little bit more....

Over the last week I've laid some more grass by the caravan site. I've tried something a bit different this time by painting the surface brown before applying the grass - this means any gaps show through as brown, not white!

Some more grass and some fencing along the running line:

Bits and Pieces

I've cleared up the area around Essington Village and started experimenting with the arrangement of the shops and houses I have. They are all Superquick models (yet to be built!).

Next job was the coach from the brakedown train. The windows have been 'frosted' by rubbing them inside with wet and dry paper. The interior moulding has been painted a bland brown colour and the roof has had a lick of paint - matt grey.

I took the opportunity to 'Virginise' Essington station by putting both the new HST set and the Class 47 and Virgin coaches in the platforms.

I've also replaced the white LEDs in the engine shed, goods shed and signal box with filament lamps - they give a much softer 'yellow' light that looks far more life like!

The Next Train to Arrive...

I've just purchased a pair of Virgin liveried HST power cars which match nicely with the virgin Mk3 coaches I already had. After a good clean (both of the bodywork and wheels, motor etc) it runs well.

The Virgin HST with all 5 Mk3 coaches.

The new train passing over Painton Viaduct

Waiting to leave Essington.

The loop length at Essington station is only long enough to take this rather more modest formation of power cars plus two coaches.

Road Signs

With the appearance of roads at Essington, so too comes the need for road signs. These are simply printed onto card and stuck onto metal wire. Some of the signs were downloaded from www.newrailwaymodellers.co.uk. The 'Essington' sign was drawn up on the PC.

Humped Back Bridge and River Bed

Half an hour grabbed this evening to apply more Pollyfilla soaked material! I've started to form the river bed and I've shaped the ground surrounding the humped back bridge that takes the road over the river. As they say, "a photo tells a thousand words", so to save myself 3000 words...

Here a Bit and There a Bit

Grabbed a few minutes in between coats of paint on a DIY job to do a few little bits. I've levelled out the ground by the caravan park in readiness for the second layer of ground work. Caravans etc laid out to give an idea of what will go where.

A few sheep have appeared in the field!

And finally I've started construction of the humped back bridge over the river.

Caravan Park Reception Building

Another building was constructed for the caravan park last night. Like the caravans it was drawn on PowerPoint, printed on card and then cut out and glued together. The roof is a piece of wet and dry abrasive paper! I've also attached a picture of the prototype that it is loosely modelled on, from Treyarnon Bay in Cornwall - our regular summer haunt!

Long Time No Post

There's been no posts for some time now because I've not made any progress! Other 'important' things have needed to take priority over the last few week! But whilst there has been no progress on the model, my mind has still been ticking over on where to go next.

And so I've drawn up the first plan for Hannerton station. This is intended primarily as a storage area for the trains. I'm hoping that whereas Essington is a country station, Hannerton will be located in the centre of a large town or city. I'm thinking of it as a mini Birmingham New Street, with the station area below street level (the road will go up, rather than the rails going down). Bridges at either end of the station will cover the initial pointwork, which will hopefully make the station look like it sits on a double track mainline. My mind's eye has working colour light signals (interlocked with the points), rather than the semaphore signals at Essington.

There's 13 points on the plan, which is more than twice the number at Essington. I've got 7 already, but the track will probably be laid in stages as finance allows to buy the required bits and pieces.

A Journey Around the Loft

More Greenery

A mammoth hill making session on Friday evening! Having used up all of the plaster-of-paris bandage I've switched to the somewhat cheaper method of an old sheet cut into squares and soaked in watery Pollifilla.

Hedges are strips of thick laminate flooring underlay covered in scatter materials.

It's going to take some time to 'green' all that hill! Notice that the backboards have now been painted sky blue.

Also some more grass and trees by the platform.

The hill runs right along the back of the station area. The hardboard retaining wall has now been covered in brick paper and some piers added.

Crane Finished

The crane that I bought off eBay (click here to see it) is now finished. The previous owner had painted it GWR brown. The crane was dismantled, rubbed down and resprayed into matt black. After reassembly various details have been picked out in different colours.

Wires, Solder and Switches

Well...the control panel is finally (almost) finished! With the last of the point motors fitted and wired up, the last wires were run back to the control panel and routed through to the appropriate locations. The only thing left to do is to fit the last 2 push buttons to control the points (I'm short of these at the moment). The route indicator LEDs are now fully functional and should help my daughters to know which direction the trains will go.

For what is essentially a fairly straightforward track layout, there seems to be hundreds of wires in the control panel! They are all there for a reason...I think!

The other update is that I've finally built a little shelf under the baseboard for supporting the old controller that supplies the 16VAC to the hand held controllers. It is no longer propped up on a couple of plastic boxes!

More Caravans

Started building 3 more of the vans last night - I particularly the the '70s three tone brown colour scheme!

An Uplifting Purchase

Another eBay purchase is this Hornby Crane which arrived today. The previous owner has cobbled this together from at least 2 different sets (the crane was originally yellow, while the match trucks were red) and has repainted it into GWR chocolate. Which all meant it was cheap! The plan is to dismantle it down, tidy it up respray in matt black, pick out specific details in other colours and add appropriate lettering.

I've had a old Pullman brake coach kicking around since we started all of this - the plan is to respray this into black as well to accompany the crane.

Caravan Progress

You may recall that a few weeks ago I shared some photographs of a prototype static caravan which I had built (see it here). Well, now the first 'production' caravan has been completed. The van is drawn on PowerPoint and printed on card. Assembly is fairly straightforward - it took about an hour to do this one.

Friday afternoon progress...

Early finish from work today - and a couple of hour to do a few more bits....

Another point motor fitted - this controls the points by the engine shed.

Three wagons from an eBay purchase - all needed new couplings, wheel bearings and metal wheels.

And finally some more fencing and gates in the entrance to the station yard. Also note the sudden growth of some trees!

Let it snow....

I've finally started covering the chicken mesh with Plaster of Paris bandage. 4 rolls used up and most of what you see only has one layer! I think I will need to find a cheaper solution for the rest of the landscape.

Road vehicles

I've just acquired a job lot of road vehicle for use around the railway. Trouble is now, I've got more cars than space to put them! Must press on with the roads!