Stephen Fay’s O gauge layouts and dioramas, Commission builds, personal builds and magazine articles

Temporarily assembled all of the boards I have at home, more progress on scenery but keeping away from the side of the boards the track is closest to to make it easy for track laying.

 

First powered movement on St Stephen’s today and the second and third boards are now bolted up to allow progress on track laying

 

Today also saw more progress on Westbourne Bridge with the final
Ballasting taking place plus some other details being added

 

Farmer Joe has been hearing Russian voices in the barn & being the 60’s the threat of Soviet spies is taken very seriously, the local constabulary and the chief has driven out in his new police Jaguar!
They came to the conclusion it is probably more to do with Joe’s home brewed apple cider Brandy which doubles as a rather good paint stripper! Watch out for the puddles constable ‍♀️!! We’ve only just got this.
May be we should have brought the Land Rover Sir!

 

Bar a back head Dan Haines has completed my next Castle 4037 The South Wales Borderers seen here as she was in the last two years of operation. A long time Newton Abbot loco so expect to see her on St Stephen’s at some point and of course Cardiff Canton.
A former Malcolm Mitchell loco kit supplied now by MM1 models with Warren Shephard tender and also a host of castings from Warren for the loco and a few MM1 castings for the tender so she’s a bit of a hybrid, Severn Mill plates to complete

 

Kemys Fawr Junction engine shed will be appearing in the model Rail magazine supplement Great British model Railways out in August

 

Westbourne bridge is nearly ready for its photo shoot

 

You’ll remember those black and white days

 

A few more jobs ticked off on Westbourne Bridge, we’ve got the photo shoot in just under two weeks

 

Boards 2, 3 and 4 now bolted together for track laying. We should start to see the sweeping curve more as we progress plus two rather fantastic large MBR trees collected

 

A delivery of Peco concrete sleepers today, these will be used on the Torcombe branch, seeing an article recently showing a nicely maintained branch in Cornwall that had large sections relaid with concrete sleepers. I have seen some one do this before, cut off the pandrol clips and glue on two bolt chairs. I will have a chat to Rob and we may opt for the C&L chairs as they are a little smaller than the nicely moulded exactoscale chairs as seen here, I’ve got a pack of check rail chairs coming from shapeways for the curve in to Combe end tunnel so we should end up with an interesting section of track & seeing as nothing will ever move on it with a nice transition from concrete to timber sleepers.

 

Summer time on shed

 

https://youtu.be/esD5aBdQjCE
Planting a patch of ferns on the embankment of Haskins hill this evening, meanwhile Westbourne Bridge is scenically complete

 

Lars op ‘t Hof grass mats, with some model scene nettles and WWS grass tufts

 

Westbourne bridge set up for its Model Rail magazine photo shoot today