Lacathedrale

@Mikkel you have had your modules hooked up a few times - how much thought did you put into them being a contiguous scene, if at all? Did you deliberately align your entry/exit tracks from a datum point to ensure this would be possible?

Wow, and my own 'Southwark Park' above the 1:32 micro! What a small world

Mikkel, I like your idea - I came up with a version which omits the lines towards the GNR depot/Blackwall station, roughly like so: Slicing the layout roughly like so, where the red line is the viewing position: I am wondering however, if this is neither fish nor fowl - and it would be better to adhere to the existing plan and for the sake of a couple of turnouts and another 3-4" of space, model those running lines - or diverge more from reality and omit the entire line that is adjacent to the hydraulic building. i can see one benefit to adding those lines, is that it makes the layout very extensible. Here are some ideas: Stage 1 - As depicted originally, with the three fiddle yards. (this photograph is upside down relative to the system plan above) Stage 2 - Would be possible to plug Blackwall station into one side, too. The layout is very simple - just a single platform face with a bay/dock: It might even make more sense to model this first - and with this paradigm it would work very easily: The nature of the station with a large curtain wall and a huge station building means one could model just the throat and mask the rest with a fiddle yard: Stage 2a - Fiddle yard connected to a station throat, and then into a fiddle yard again: Stage 2b - If one decided that modelling the buildings and/or removing that curtain wall would be helpful, you could replace the GNR Yard/Station Fiddle with a station platform board: Stage 2c - Of course, this would plug directly into the Poplar Jct layout: Stage 3? - Another option would be to ignore the station entirely and model the GNR coal/goods yard and the dockside: In terms of orientation this is inverted in relation to the system plan above - the entrance from the Poplar Jct to the GNR yard is bottom-left of this map image: Post-war aerial photography (in this photograph, Blackwall station has been demolished and it looks like the GNR warehouse is close to it too! You can see the road bridge bottom-right which is visible in the bottom-left of the aerial photograph in the Stage 2 heading) Stage 4? Another path might be to model snapshots of the railway up the main line. Some examples: Stage 4a - The hydraulic works opposite Millwall Junction between the embankment, the hydraulic works, and the huge raised walkway - definitely not the huge fan of sidings! Stage 4b - Maybe even the Millwallt Junction engine shed (as seen above below the blue marker): Lots of options, as I'm sure you can imagine!

I had an idea a while back about creating a series of modular layouts based on the London & Blackwall Railway - and with some tentative steps around designing a layout in larger scales (i.e. larger than 2mmFS!) I've come to the realisation that there is (for us mortals) an axis which is labelled 'commercial availability vs. lone modeller practicality' which limits the scope of a model. If there is wide availability for a given scale or prototype, then it becomes more practical for a single modeller to create larger, more complex layout. As one might imagine, S-scale shoves this axis hard against smaller layouts of more limited scope - and it is with great inspiration I've spent a good amount of time reviewing Mikkel's nano-layouts. I thought it might be interesting to put up an example in the vein of the Farthing layouts, re-scoped to S-scale and the L&BR. This snippet is of the junction by the old Poplar station - open from 1840 to 1845, and still extant until . It exists in a tiny slither of land between Preston's Road and Blackwall way. Here's a view looking eastard from Preston's Road: And the opposite direction from Blackwall way, the inside faces of old platform surfaces can clearly be seen, as well as the signal box and the hellacious curve on those sidings: The last photograph is from the 2nd Poplar station on the other side of Blackwall Way. Here's a shot looking in the same orientation as above - you can just make out the outline of the signal box underneath the Blackwall Way bridge: An OS grid map of the area shows the following: Here's a shot showing the area discussed - top-right are the two roads and the junction, middle-bottom is the MR goods/dock yard, and right is the GNR depot. The road bordering the right edge of this shot takes a strange bend out towards the middle-right, this is to fit the old alignment of the tracks to Blackwall station - demolished and rebuilt as a power station (visible in the first photograph): Interestingly, the 1867 map shows a plain through route from Millwall Jct (left beyond Prestons Road) to the new Poplar station. The high-level LNWR goods complex can be seen in the corner of the map: Here's the OS grid map with (a very rough) templot plan superimposed over the top: As it stands the plan isn't workable - a minimum radius of 2 chains seems a little extreme even for the diminutive GE locomotives that would run on the branch. Reseaching the environs shows huge complexes of warehouses, docks and yards - a rats nest of LNWR, NLR, GNR, MR and L&BR tracks snake between smoke stacks, warehouses, hydraulic works, engine sheds, workhouses and pubs. Even into the 1950's and 60's the level of ruin and lack of care on the branch is evident - maybe scenically more rich than the perfectly preserved pre-group railway we often see? The biggest drawback I can see is that unlike the Farthing Layouts, it's a heck of alot of track that would require three separate fiddle yards to operate 'as is'. There are lots of interesting snapshots around the London docks, but most of them are endless rafts of ladders and wagon turntables. Anyway, food for thought- I hope you found this enjoyable.

I've got some wagons to sort brake levers, push rods and shoes out for, My gut feeling is to use the WB6 society etches, 'Brake lever guides, RCH pin-down, 4 types, 6 of each' for those, cutting the levers, push rods out of brass and the block out of styrene. Before I dump a bunch of time into this, is this pretty much a known solution? Am I overlooking something?

Hi NewSouthEaston - the plan has morphed from pre to. post- rebuild a few times - just circling the idea still really, not sure it's alive!

The LCDR wagon is approaching completion above the solebar: I have washed alternately light and dark on the inside to bleach it, and with a dirty brown/grey on the outside. I have also attempted to letter it (badly, but I've got to start somewhere). I've added the crown plates and removed those huge rings on the drop sides to replace with what I hope is a better representation of the hinges: It's clear that the glue-rivets on the washer plates are not very good at all compared to the salami-sliced rod (left of the 'L') so I've got some 10 thou styrene rod in the post, and some 5/8" archer rivet transfers too - I'll see how that goes.

Hi Simon, I don't think so - I saw Ferring in the flesh at Stevenage in (I think) spring/summer 2019? The more I think about it, the more I realise that I must have got Wandle VAlley (with that long curved baseboard and terriers) mixed up with another layout. Please accept my apologies! Cheers,

I think I must be mistaken, or conflating some other LBSCR layout with this one in S - the layout terminated in a large, square-ish station buliding with a wide gravel yard and gates.

About time I slapped on some paint onto the LCDR 3-plank: Each timber is painted individually, and the outside has had grey (with a good deal of brown, if you can believe it) added to it. It needs lettering and washing. And, before I forget, crown plates! I picked what I felt was a very obscure prototype, only to find the latest SECR society modelling gazette to feature not one but TWO of them submitted by different authors!

Can you please advise what stain you used? I wonder if it might be more effective than the indian inks I'm using now!

Very ingenious! May I ask what the ground-frame looking-device is, adjacent your controller? How do you operate? Inglenook?

The wagon rail in place I used some 0.25mm x 1mm strip bent and drilled out for a pivot (which I subsequently broke) on a 0.75mm rail. Charitably we can say, 'lessons were learnt' - but it at it does at least look like an LBSC open wagon! Realistically I should remove the rail, the hinge plates, ream out the holes and start over - not sure I can face it right now, though! I've got 12thou styrene rod being delivered for the rivets, the rest of the items are dependent on the society stores - It awaits buffers, coupling hooks, axle guards, axle boxes, and brake gear. If anyone is about to tell me this wagon had double-ended brakes on both sides, please do so now!

I am using limewood sleepers for hand laying track, and one of the things that can be done is dyeing or staining them before laying the track. Here are some in various shades of black and brown india ink mixes: Full strength brown, full strength black, a little black, 50/50 black brown, medium strength black, medium strength brown. I. must note that these are brushed on and soaked in, rather than being steeped. Another shot in the same order - the rail colour goes from chocolate brown (left) to an umber (right). It doesn't feel like any of these are right, but I'm not sure how else to attack this! any ideas?

I just read MRJ35 and was inspired both by Charford (in the sense of a BLT-too-big-for-its-britches) and Wickham (in the sense of having the road and terraced houses 'capping' the end of the layout). I think at 14' you may as well be in for a penny, in for a pround when it comes to length!

Attempting the plan with a 'model railway builder's eye', that is to say something with an eye for the practical rather than the real - doesn't actually save very much space at all: Just about a foot in length, hardly worth the compromise! Here's a shot of the station staff in 1886:

I've just come back around to this and with a couple of years experience in Templot put together another plan, a mere 3' x 12' for an exact scalein 4mm/ft What do you mean, it's only two curved douple slips, a branch crossover and an asymmetric tandem!? I'm still not clear on what that headshunt is meant for, but found some pictures of the engine shed (far left) and here: And one thing I didn't notice from the following shot was the vestigial goods shed behind the station, and the traction engine on stage-right:

Last update for the weekend - door springs are in place (including a slot for the brake lever in one) as are the repairs to the hinges, the wagon hooks, washer plates for the wagon rail, etc. Tried to represent the middle bearers and so on underneath, I used the wrong timber Wagon rail loosely placed in - it is joined to a flat section by the time it goes behind the guide, so this is just for effect:

I can't really take any credit for technique at all, it's all thanks to @ScottW ! However the NWSL chopper is invaluable - you can use known dimensioned pieces to set up the guides and then churn them out. Very handy indeed. I find it fairly challenging to get square edges with a scalpel and since this uses a razor blade held rigid against a steel backplate, no such problems with it. I overcomplicated the curves on this model - I imported the drawing into QCAD and used a three-point circle tool dotting around the outside a given curve to derive the centrepoint and radius, and worked off of that. It was fine for the wagon end tops, but as for the wagon rail guide - I should have just measured in situ - as I mentioned the end stanchions are fractionally too wide - which is no good at all for a semi-circular guide that must fix directly to its supports, not half on the stanchions! I used the same olfa compass cutter I used for the sides, for the wagon rail guide - scribing the surface of a sheet of 10 thou brass. For my test piece I cut through, but for the 'production' run I snipped around with some xuron scissors https://xuron.com/index.php/main/consumer_products/4/29 and flattened them. The lip was just a strip of the same material cut and roughly bent around a suitable mandrel (the lid of a permanent marker!) and then tacked into place in the middle and ends, and then with a healthy spread of flux spread across the full extremity of the piece. buffed with a fibreglass brush and a square file and glued on. I think I could probably do with a set of Xuron PhotoEtch scissors (which have a finer nib) and some Deluxe Materials superglue - the stuff I'm using now are one-shot dispoable tubes and incredibly wasteful. Thank you kindly for the compliment, it means alot coming from you!

Progress continued last night unabated - I think I have about 7.5 hours into this wagon so far, including the aborted effort using v-groove styrene. Tasks remaining: solebar - i.e. a pair of the wagon hooks (for horse power), crown plates and wooden door springs headstock - extra thickness, add draw plate nuts door - extra thickness to the door bands, catches and cotter pins at the top, ends - end stanchions, the wagon rail guide and the bloody wagon rail! several hundred rivets... A few small problems - the inside washer plates for the end stanchions aren't aligned - I think I glued them in on too narrow of a centre, but happily one can't see the outside and inside of the same end so hopefully I can get away with that. Additionally, I decided against thickening the headstock for now - it's something I should have realised when the I glued the floor and headstocks together, and then the solebars didn't span the whole distance between the headstock inner faces. I assumed I'd measured wrong- but I'd just used the wrong bloody thickness of styrene for the headstock material! The washer plates (nee 'vertical strapping/corners') on the wagon are made from 40 thou x 5 thou strip (to represent 2½" x 1/4" iron), and the ironwork known as knees, onto which those washers and bolts are fixed, are from 40 thou x 30 thou (to represent the 2½" x 2" heft). These need to be tapered to roughly half the thickness at the top. Easily done with the wagon sides flat on the workbench before assembly with a few strokes of a file. Unfortunately however, I forgot that the door ironwork is inverted, with the thin washer plates on the inside and thicker door bands on the outer. Having already glued on hinges (although I appear to be missing the nearmost in the above photo) and the catches, I decided to add an additional strip of 5 thou x 40 thou and taper the very top. A bit of a bodge, but good to know. The wagon sheeting hooks (the round pulley shaped things) are slightly oversized also, but not enough I felt to detract from the accuracy of the model.

The next wagon on the workbench was an LCDR 3-plank drop-side goods wagon (SR Dia. 1326) . Chosen purely because it was the oldest wagon I could see in the closest wagon book I had to-hand (Southern Wagons Vol. 3) that had flat ends! The buffers and hooks are from the association, the rest of the wagon is scratchbuilt from styrene (taking many cues from @ScottW) and in honour of the imperial scale, I'll try to avoid using metric in this thread. With that in mind the wagon sheeting is 40 thou, with strips of 5 thou cut on a jig for ironwork. The headstocks and solebars are 80 thou sheet cut into lengths. I made a mistake however, and may be worth repeating - is that the side of the floor that faces the viewer in a wagon diagram is capped with a side rail, which is a scale 70 thou thick/wide, rather than the floor itself being that thick. In this model, I didn't realise that and so ended up with a floor too thick (so when I add the W-irons, the wagon will ride approx 1mm too high). With the 'success' of that, I decided to order an olfa compass cutter and tackle a round-end wagon, and leafing through 'Southern Wagons Vol 2' (in order to not deliberately pin me to Kent!) I chose an LBSCR 5-plank open goods, which I felt appropriate regardless of geography given that the Brighton ended up with over 3,500 of these: https://www.bluebell-railway.co.uk/bluebell/pics/3346.html My first attempt was a bit of a mish-mash - I used 100 thou v-grooved evergreen for everything, which I felt was as close as damnit to the 109 required for 7" scale planks - but it felt like i was being penny smart and pound foolish, so I started over. At this point I had also bought myself a Northwest Shortline Chopper II - and it was invaluable in creating identically long strips. The solebars and headstocks were should have been put together with double layers of 40 thou x 188 thou strip. (at this point I have just realised that I didn't double-thickness the headstocks, which is why they look a bit strange!) One thing I'm quite proud of is that I was able to parse the drawing with the knowledge gleaned from arcticles by Chris Croft in MRJ to understand some of the reasoning behind things, and some realistic dimensions for things that aren't depicted in the drawing. For example, the long thin iron plates (not 'strapping') on the outside are washer plates, and are backed on the inside of the wagon sheeting (not 'planking'!) with chunky iron section called knees. These taper up from the bottom to the top and are really quite substantial! (at this point I have also just realised that I should be using thicker styrene for the door bands - which are inverted with the thick section on the outside!) This is the current status of the wagon , I have just applied the diagonal braces and side washer plates which overlap the side rail (which I have made as part of the floor) and the pulley-shaped sheet hooks to the wagon sides. There are a fair few bits left to do: solebar - i.e. a pair of the wagon hooks (for horse power), crown plates and wooden door springs headstock - extra thickness, add draw plates door - extra thickness to the bands, catches at the top, ends - end stanchions, the wagon rail guide and the bloody wagon rail! several hundred rivets...

Does anyone have any idea what the round washer things are on the bottom planks of this LBSCR wagon (bottom picture only): https://www.bluebell-railway.co.uk/bluebell/pics/3346.html I thought maybe a place to crank a wagon sheet over, but I see there is one smack bang in the middle of the end (albeit one plank up) and I'm more confused than ever! EDIT; research into 'An Hillustrated History of Southern Wagons vol 2 shows pictures of these and notes them as 'pulley-shaped hooks'. There is indeed a regular hook supplanting these LBSCR designed ones in a later SR photograph.

I remember back in the dim and distant days of the mid 2000's (I believe that the East London Railway was alive and running A-stock) that I was researching my very first model railway layout, and I came across a beautiful terminus station which I later found out was built in S-scale. All I can remember is that it had a large gravel forecourt, a square-ish stone building and I belive a single double-sided platform. If I remember correctly, it was a terrier or two providing motive power. Any ideas?

@Izzy - Tim Horn baseboards are (I believe) 6mm ply and I think it would be a stretch to say they are easily twisted or flimsy - but that may be due to the precision of the laser cutter and egg-crate bracing. My previous calculations (2kg XPS vs 3.5kg ply) do not factor in the weight of lights, a notional proscenium arch/backscene/etc. which inevitably will have to be made of ply (I appreciate foamboard is possible, but I think the most staunch advocates couldn't vouchsafe a warp and bump-free width/height of foamboard of more than a foot in all dimensions?) - an 18" end and back board of a 4' x 2' baseboard is an easy 5kg - unless it is self supporting and into which the baseboard slides/clips/is bolted. Low noise levels isn't something I'd considered but that's a very fair point, as I suppose is the ease of construction!

Thanks chaps - I feel like I might be monopolising this thread however - Unless anyone has strong opinions I think I will take the progress shots out and leave those in a personal workbench thread and just show the results here!