Thursday 22 December 2016

Couple of tiny details added last night - manual points lever frame and point rodding to each of the three manually controlled points for the fuel roads and the maintenance depot:
 And at the warehouse, air-conditioning machines on pallets, wrapped up for delivery:


Monday 19 December 2016

Early Christmas present from my girlfriend - a Class 37 in DRS livery, with sound fitted. I have the Hornby TTS Network Rail from a few years ago, and the comparison between the two models is night and day really - but then the new one does cost three times as much:


 Here I have been experimenting with laying the siding to the goods platform without any ballast, intending for it to just be completely overgrown with grass and weeds. This is the first stage - some 2mm static grass sheet cut to size and stuck down. I'm not sure yet whether this is actually going to work.

Something that has worked is my car park behind the maintenance shed. Just needs some white lines painting and the netting attached for the wire fence, then some grass added between the track and the fence. This area wont get inspected all that closely because its behind a building, so I just need to fill in some basic scenery.

Thursday 15 December 2016

Tuesday 13 December 2016

The latest addition to the fleet - 08417 in Network Rail yellow:


Fitted with DCC and a Stay-Alive by OliviasTrains, with a sneaky discount on their Black Friday sale. It runs silky smooth, as would be expected. It has opening doors, so I may add a driver hanging out of the door in due course, and it also needs weathering.

Progress on the layout - I've added some keyclamp handrails:




and finished the station platforms with a paving slab pdf downloaded from scalescenes for £1.99, and official Network Rail platform edge copings. Although I think there should be a tactile paving strip just behind them as well:


I've also nicked my low-relief warehouse that I made last year for my garage layout, which will be totally redesigned once I've finished this one. Its made from leftover bits from a Peco TMD kit, and some cantilever angle-iron trusses that I bought second hand from my local model shop for £2, and some corrugated clear plastic sheet. The canopy is a bit wavy, I will have to take that off and do it again:


Also painted half of the car park and started to put the security fence up:


And I've also finished all of the ballasting to the main two scenic boards. There is a little to do on the third board, but thats mostly non-scenic so I havent started work on that one yet.

Thursday 8 December 2016

Just received a tiny little vending machine from scalemodelscenery.co.uk (pencil for scale):


Wednesday 7 December 2016

Some more work on the grass, bushes and weeds near the fuelling point. Taken while the glue was still wet, and still more work needed, but its definitely getting there now.




Tuesday 6 December 2016

Initial experiments with static grass. Peco applicator and 6mm 'autumn grass' in one uniform coat is all I've done so far:

It looks ok - I actually think it looks a lot better in that photo than it does in real life, but its just the first run so it should improve once I start layering different lengths and colours into it.

I have also added the brickwork patterned card to the platform edges, polyfilla'd the screw heads and ballasted the three station tracks, but none of that is particularly photo-worthy just yet.

Thursday 1 December 2016


More ballasting, and some stop signs leading out from the depot.