Somewhere SW of London. Somewhen before today

All the very best of luck, Rick.

Since I have known you Rick, your layouts have had a couple of major disruptions, I guess you hope this will be the last time?

Sol said

Since I have known you Rick, your layouts have had a couple of major disruptions, I guess you hope this will be the last time?

From “Post #288,068”, 29th June 2023, 11:00 PM

Thank you Sol. One never knows with life. There may or may not be more twists and turns ahead. Having the right roof over our heads is ultimately far more important than a hobby. 

Moving right along. July has arrived. I have four weeks until this layout is exhibited. And after today every Saturday and Sunday until then is booked for other things. 


Today I cracked on with the build. The result is that the platform is fully paved (as fully as it is going to be) and the Great Wall is largely in place to divide the levels. The flight of stone steps gives access to the narrow gauge engine shed. A zig-zag road down from the cottages leads to the wagon turntable siding. 


The station building is fundamentally complete but I have yet to start on the canopy. 


Most of the stone wall is Vollmer card; the closely-matching steps are covered in Scalescenes downloaded “coursed ashlar”. The roadway makes use of a piece of foamboard covered in gritty sand which had been intended for use as concrete walls on the Waddlemarsh layout but was too coarse. 

Looking good Rick  



Ed

Returning after a bit of a break to move house.  

We are now settled into west Cornwall with a view over the Atlantic just a couple of miles from Lands End.  

Waddlemarsh didn't come out nicely and almost fell to bits when I tried to separate the boards.  One board, that with the station scene, suffered more than the others and was even put out for council collection as scrap.  It was saved in the nick of time by a member from Twickenham & District MRC and was stored in their clubroom until I could arrange a van run to collect t - and the other parts.  

All are now in the Hayle Railway Modellers clubroom where they await a considerable amount of TLC and rebuilding.  The intention is to erect the boards on trestles such that this can become a moveable exhibition layout.  The controller will move to the opposite side and a little reconfiguration will be needed overall.  The tentative plan is to have it ready for show by 2025.  

Returning to the fold, so to speak.

It's been too long since I visited this site and for no other reason than it has dropped off my radar.  

An update.  Waddlemarsh station scene was recovered from spending two weeks outdoors as we left London and has been reunited with the fiddle yard and goods yard boards ℅ Hayle Railway Modellers.  The small square board which linked the two around the corner of the room was also saved but has proven to be beyond renovation.  It will be stripped of the parts still on it and the wood used for a new link-span from fiddle yard to station as the layout is reconfigured.  

Having spent the past six months or so preparing Porthgarrow for exhibition and then having shown it on three occasions the Waddlemarsh boards have been laid up under polythene sheets until last week.  I only have space allocated in the clubroom to work on one at a time.  The erection of the full layout as a straight end-to-end will be subject to future discussions with the club.  However work has begun with the inspection of the fiddle yard which is in good condition.  

This comprises of two fans of five roads each, serving the passenger and freight lines respectively.  The re-working will allow a connection between the two fans such that a freight train can use the passenger lines and reach the freight fan in the yard or vice versa; this was not possible before.  

That is where the small board will be re-used.  It only requires stripping and cutting to size both of which can be readily done using club facilities.  It will then be laid with the custom-built crossover track which featured previously but with an additional crossover as described above.  

With no timeframe in mind once the yard has been dealt with and rewired to my satisfaction - including with power connectors suitable for a transportable multi-board layout - it will be time to address the station scene.  Having taken a look on Wednesday this does require significant work but is fundamentally in tact.  A few bits have been robbed for Porthgarrow but can readily be replaced.  I have a stock of signalboxes currently awaiting layouts for example! The outer end of that board will need more work because the tracks will no longer leave it around a sharp curve to fit a room corner.  They will be straight.  But the fundamentals remain the same - the passenger lines will still vanish beneath the footbridge to their two-road "outer" fiddle yard whilst the goods lines will lead into the yard.  So another short new section will be needed here.  

The goods yard board is also substantially OK but has suffered from mildew.  Most of this has brushed off easily but as and when it comes time to renovate that board the scenes will be repainted / restored as I see fit at the time.  

The entire layout will require new backscenes but these will be the same iD Backscenes "Into the City" as used before.  The existing ones have not survived the extended stay outdoors nor the extended damp months ins ide the clubroom through winter.  

Subject to funding and agreeing space with the club the intention remains to have Waddlemarsh back up and running, and in theory available for exhibition though I don't have suitable transport for it, by late 2025.  

Must be nice to be contemplating the layout without the 90 eg corner module imposed upon you by the rooms dimensions.

I spent some time at club today checking out the boards and assessing the work required to restore Waddlemarsh to running order.  It's perfectly do-able.  The biggest issues are cost and space.  Ironically the plain track has largely survived intact and it is the pointwork which requires replacing.  Some because it is damaged beyond repair and some because of the new end-to-end configuration which will enforce the relocation of a few points.  

A new custom-built fiddle-yard entry module will be required and I shall take the opportunity to obtain a two-to-four rather than two-to-three set-up.  That requires two points feeding to a short central diamond with the exits both feeing double-slips rather than just two more points.  The old one had one double-slip and a simple turnout.  

After brushing a significant amount of mildew off the boards - thankfully it's nice and dry now after a  seemingly endless wet winter so they cleaned up nicely - the basic scenery and woodwork is not too bad at all.  It looked far worse covered in blobs of green and black but that hasn't even stained anything.  

Today I stripped the old corner board of the sharply-curved tracks and cut a piece from it which will form a link span.  That will support the crossover and will connect to the main fiddle-yard board at one end then to teh station scene board at the other.  The girder bridge which was built skewed across the lines as a scenic break is OK to re-use with a re-skin of the Scalescenes brick paper used and may therefore remain at a skew angle rather than reconfiguring it to a right-angle.  Too many layouts have 90-degree structures as scenic breaks; many bridges in real life are at anything but right-angle to the line.  

I have identified an area on the fiddle yard board where point control and isolating switches can be located which will minimise wiring across board joints; only the common feed will have to be connected rather than dozens of individual wires.  I have not yet identified where the power controller will go but it has to swap from what will in future be the viewing side of the board.  The best option may be to mount it in a cradle beneath a baseboard.  Point and isolation control for the rest of the layout can be placed elsewhere again hopefully reducing the number of plug-in electrical connections required.  

Progress will not be fast.  I have around 2 - 3 hours a week in the club room for my own projects.  But progress there already is.  

2 - 3 hours a week is more than I'm managing at the moment. Following along.