what are people doing on their layout right now

[MatP]

Hi All,

Here's a nice non-controversial post with some pictures of progress in the corner of my Scottish terminus layout.

I've landscaped the bank that forms the scenic divider (no backscene as I need access to the fiddle yard) and started work on a road bridge. The bridge is built from bits of stripwood, MDF and stone plasticard, with Peco wing walls from the bits box.

I had originally covered the piers in Scalescenes brick paper but being in a dark corner, a strong texture was needed. Also, brick bridges are rare to non-existent in the West Highland area. I therefore changed to stone,  painted dark grey with a bit of brown and quite a lot of green in it. The superstructure will be plate girders and stone end walls / abutments.

Because of the curve, the span is pretty long (over 80'). I think I'll need to add a central support for realism, maybe iron columns rather than another stone pier as space is pretty tight. Even with that, I don't think the driver of that HGV should be allowed across. Perhaps the weak, pre-WW2 bridge explains why the yard also has a level crossing to allow heavy lorries to access it...

More soon if you like,
Mat

[MatP]

Hi folks,

The bridge is now finished and most of the scenery round it: I haven't yet made good the join between the two because I haven't yet decided whether the bridge will be permanent or removeable.

The bridge is a mixture of bits of stripwood and MDF, Slater's stone effect plastic card (painted in a subtle mix of grey-greens that don't come out in the pictures, honest!) and girders cut from a Kato Unitrack bridge module. I had to make the parapet walls etc. in proportion to the Kato girders, so quite a chunky bridge has resulted, but it will be safe for HGV's now.

The clearances for trains are quite tight, owing to the set track curves. The spacing isn't too bad but it's a good job that the windows in N gauge coaches don't open, otherwise people leaning out for some 37 'thrash' departing the station would regret it... Anyway, the whole thing cost about a tenner to do, including the Kato bridge.

I have two more projects coming up: one is to (attempt to) scratchbuild some OTA wagon bodies onto some Farish chassis. Having only some very basic drawings, I've bought a Cambrian 4mm scale OTA kit and I will take measurements off that.

The other involves the white building in the foreground of one of the pictures - it's the plastic shell from the old Farish goods / engine shed kit. I picked this up for a couple of quid years ago, at the first ever Leamington Spa show. I'm going to clad it in plastic card, either as a modern steel warehouse or maybe as the yard's original goods shed, now trackless but still in use. This is an 80's layout and a construction / building supplies company has taken over the station's old goods yard.

Best Wishes,
Mat

[Bob Tidbury]

I am not doing anything at the moment as I dont feel very happy being down in the shed on my own ,after my friend Reg pased away at the end of March .from Covid 19 .He was,  like my Late friend Cyril ,a sort of older brother and we used to have some real nice chats about railways and his job as signal man ending up as senior signalman on the Western Region , while we were running the layout ,its difficult to operate the layout on my own it really needs two people three is even better as one can operate the branch line as it has a separate control panel its even better with four people as you can have one on the branch one operating the yard and then two operating the up and down lines .
Its a big layout 20ft x 8ft plus the branchline .
I will try and get down there soon .But I am really a people person and like to share the layout .
Bob Tidbury

[dannyboy]

We might not be there in person Bob, but we are with you in spirit. 

[Bob Tidbury]

  dannyboy its appreciated ,I have joined a really nice club and we are having virtual club meetings every other week on a Wednesday its on ZOOM  and that has cheered me up so much its organised by Snowwolflair .and I did manage to stay down in the shed one evening untill my battery ran out in my Ipad ,I really am a sloppy sentimental old fool but I just cant help it thats the way I am . And I cant change .
But thankyou
Bob Tidbury

[lil chris]

Hi Bob, sorry to hear about your friend and I am pleased to hear you have joined your local club. There is nothing wrong with being sentimental it proves your human, wish I was a bit nearer it would be fun to join you on your layout. Hopefully when this crisis is over you will have made some new friends to enjoy the hobby with. Keep safe, Chris.

[port perran]

Very sorry to hear about your friend Bob.
Hopefully, joining your local club will enable you to regain your mojo with regard to modelling.
Nothing wrong with being a sloppy sentimental old fool by the way.
Best Regards
Martin

[Bob Tidbury]

  Guys Ive just had a call from Crewearply40 and he's more or less ordered me to go down the shed sometime this week ., and Val keeps on telling me to stop weighing down the armchair as it wont float away and get down the shed ,there is no way she will come down and give me moral support as there are a few rather large spiders that appear from time to time and she is petrified of spiders .
I have got a lot of extra scenery to do but I keep saying I WILL GO DOWN but then find an excuse ,its too hot or it's raining or what ever .
Regards to you all
Bob Tidbury

[crewearpley40]

Bob @Bob Tidbury . It's more persuasion and encouragement to remember those, do what you enjoy and sort the jobs that need doing. When it's safe to do so, you will be inundated with visitors

[MatP]

Hi,

First of all, my best wishes to those who are badly affected because of the lockdown, have lost friends to the virus or who are worried about jobs, the economy and the future generally.

On a lighter note, I have another little project on the go which I hope some people might find interesting: a cement wagon unloading facility. Although the storage silos were made by Hornby-Lyddle End, the pipework to connect one's powdered cement tankers to these silos is another matter. I've been looking for photos or descriptions of the piping for some time and have concluded that it would be easier to track down a photograph of Lord Lucan riding Shergah down the main runway at Area 51.

There are plenty of photos out there of small cement unloading facilities at Lawrence Hill, Barnstaple, Syston, Middlesborough Goods, Walsall, Tullamore (!) etc., but the unloading pipes are usually hidden by wagons, or the photos are taken from too great a distance to show fine detail. A lot of layouts with cement terminals which I've seen at shows unload their PCA or Presflo wagons in a big shed, with (ahem) no pipework on show. However, I managed to scrape together just enough information to have a go at a scratchbuilt model.

Judging by a couple of photos of Syston where the view of the cement silos isn't blocked, often cement storage hoppers (as modelled in the Lyddle End range) seem just to have had loose hoses coming straight out of them, dangling down the legs when not in use. And sometimes wagons were loaded directly into lorries (I guess the lorries had on-board compressors), e.g. Presflos being unloaded at Blaenau Ffestiniog station for the building of the Trawsfynydd nuclear power station.

I wanted something a bit more structural, and the best photos I could find were of the cement terminal opposite the Bedford branch platform at Bletchley.

Actually, I couldn't find many photos of the cement-unloading infrastructure (in spite of its easily-accessible location), and had to rely on freeze-framing You Tube videos of passing Class 230's or whatever for some of my "information". I don't live near Bletchley and doubt a trip would be a good idea (or even a legal one) in the present circumstances. My apologies for not reproducing any prototype photos here as they're all copyright (and I've lost the links).

At Bletchley, the pipework is carried on vertical H-girder posts. Running horizontally along the tops of these is a large-diameter pipe for the powdered cement with connections to the hoppers and mountings for intake hoses (to connect to the wagons) at shallow angles. Lower down there is a small-diameter pipe for the compressed air that forces the cement powder out of the wagons, with take-offs for hoses. Beneath that there's a horizontal strut to strengthen the whole affair.

Anyway, after all that spiel, here's a photo of progress on my N gauge version. I didn't have any small H-girder so the posts are just 1mm square rod. The large pipe is 2.5mm (possibly a bit big), the lower 1mm, again because that's what I had. I also used slices of the 2.5mm to make flanges for the 1mm pipe; other flanges are slices of round sprue. The longitudinal strut at the bottom may look like it's made from round piping, which it is, as initially I thought that there were two air pipes. The mountings for the intake hoses are made from more 2.5mm rod, chamfered at 20 degrees (I guess the shallow angle helps prevent blockages on the real things).

I'm going to put a scratch built compressor building at the left hand end (at Bletchley, the compressed air pipes come out of the ground, no doubt from a large centralised compressor some way away). On my layout, both the cement pipe and the air line will come out of the compressor house (just in case the cement pipe has an extra air supply for added 'push'). The Lyddle End hoppers will be at the opposite end from the air supply, as at Bletchley. I haven't yet modelled the pipes that link to the hoppers; hoses will be added from black-coated wire; I also need to put some sort of representation of flanged joints at intervals along the main pipes.

More photos anon - you have been warned!
Best Wishes,
Mat

[MatP]

Hi All,

I sent this earlier (or thought I did) but the message didn't appear. Anyway, here's a picture of the finished cement unloading scene, with compressor house and pipework. If you squint, the pipes actually run up into the Lyddle End hoppers. The loco is, appropriately, 37425 "Concrete Bob", wondering where its snowploughs have gone probably.

Best Wishes,
Mat

[PGN]

I am terra-forming the hill at the right-hand end of the viewing section. So far I've got the cutting profile complete and ready for papier-mache. I'm now working on the sunken road and building bases. Then I'll move on to the rest of the land surface.

[Bob Tidbury]

I am trying to cool the shed down ready for our virtual club meeting this evening  so far without success its like a sauna ,far too hot to enjoy (playing ) sorry operating the layout ,at the moment a fan on the floor and up on the end wall an extractor fan going full on , perhaps I should have an ex factory fan instead of an ex tractor fan ,I hope by 8 oclock it will be bearable if not I might have to go upstairs as Val wants to watch the tele and she says I make too much noise .if I am in the back room  .
Bob Tidbury

[Dickydcc]

Spent the afternoon making a platform with the Mrs, what a pleasant way to pass away  a bank holiday.

[AndyRA]

Giving the trains a run on the Bank Holiday.