Model Railway

Well, my wife and I scoured the house to find a place for a model railway. The loft was no good due to the head room (only 4ft), so my dreams of a huge continuous run with express trains dashing around were out.

After much scratching of heads we finally decided that the only safe, unused and covered area was in the front porch! There are two shelves about 30 cms wide by 1.6 meters long joined at the corner. Not very inspiring but beggars can't be choosers, so I set to work planning.

The 'normal' gauges and scales were out because of the restricted space, so no 'OO' or 'HO' scale. That left me with three possible options. 'N' Gauge, 2mm Finescale, 3mm Finescale. I soon abandoned the finescale options since the thought of hand building yards of track was too depressing. 'N' Gauge it was then.

At a scale of 1:148 or roughly 2mm model size to one foot real size it would fit with enough operating interest. I decided to plump for the ever popular late 1940's to late 1960's covering British Rail's hayday. With some licence this would mean being able to run steam and diesel locomotives, along with a large range of rolling stock.

As to the design, I went for a 'Branch Line Terminous' station with a viaduct corner section and a non-scenic 'Fiddle' or Marshalling yard at the other end.

Here's the basic station layout on it's chipboard base, the chipboard was a mistake as shall be seen in a later post, but the basic elements are shown here. The simple track plan has been drawn out and the semi-constructed buildings are evident. Some slight re-arrangement took place before the final plan was arrived at.

Here's the fiddle yard board with the track design drawn up, again the MDF shelf that I used as the baseboard was a mistake, but it's done now.

The corner section built from 6mm MDF, if I ever do another layout this is what I will use for the baseboard material. Since the viaduct was to be curved, no kits were available, therefore it had to be 'scratchbuilt'. The first three pillars (made of cardboard) can be seen on the bed waiting for fitment.

The five pillars in place, the lower portions have been dressed with 'brick papers' and the arches are under construction, once all the glue had set these pillars became extremely strong.

The pillars have been dressed, the abutments added, and the archways installed. The parapet and approach walls will be added after the base has been built up into mountains. The back frame has also been added.

That's enough for this post, watch this space to see how progress goes.