Waspen Street Revisited...

Painting and gluing bits and pieces together today so I can fill the brute trolleys and other low trolleys with parcels destined for the farther reaches of the railway empire !

I'll be adding these items above to the layout tonight, so I probably won't post a pic until tomorrow morning.

Meanwhile, the PVA/water/detergent mix is slowly drying where I have added buffers to the end of the sidings. I have also added some Peco dummy point motors to the two points on the layout. This meant removing ballast and gluing them in. Once in, I gave them a paint of flat black. Somewhere along the way, I managed to accidentally damage a single rail leading to the sector plate. I snagged it some how and lifted one rail from the sleepers, damaging the chairs along the way. Luckily it was only about six chairs that were damaged but I couldn't get the rail to sit properly again. I ended up drilling a small hole alongside the rail and inserting a small length of brass wire. To this I soldered the rail in place. Now it is all hunky dory and the trains roll through pretty nicely, again !

Now I need to dig out all the locos and rolling stock that I wish to use on the layout (come next weekend), for a test run !

Cheers, Gary.

 

As promised, a few updated pics of what I have been working on yesterday and today...

Up, up and away...! Waspen Street is now free standing !

Down the two centre roads.

A look at the island platform and the new wall (behind buffers) and back scene.

Both platforms and the relay boxes and cable trunking.

An above view of the relay boxes, cable trunking, including electrical lines to the point motors.

Toto's Hammer Factory...

Every additional item (staition staff, trolleys, barrels, pallets, sacks, crates etc) has been super glued in place, so hopefully nothing will go amiss. The cable trunking is two lengths of 3.2mm x 1mm styrene stripe. The top strip has the lids carved into it every 2 feet, with the use of a razor saw. The orange cables are old telephone line wires, about 0.8mm diameter. The relay boxes need a little weathering on the facing side as the other side has been done and I was going to face the opposite side to the front before I realised the ledge of the roof faces the rails.

Now for some serious testing !!

Cheers, Gary.

 

Thanks Chris. I read up on the cable trunking and since it has been used since the mid to late sixties, I thought that it would add another little feature to the layout. Only had to remove some ballast back to baseboard for the relay huts, trunking and point motors. All done in a few hours. The glue (PVA/Water) is still drying and I had the layout out in the sun today as well !

Thanks Ed. Point motors don't look too bad, hence why I added them !

Cheers, Gary.

 

Thank you Phil. Extra detailing is quite easily achieved on small layouts, but you need to know when to stop ! I am actually thinking of adding a goat or two to the scene, after all, British Rail moved anything and everything !

Cheers, Gary.

 

Thank you Toto.

The ware houses are the Scalescenes shop backs, slightly modified for my use on here. I really only used the skins, everything else is 3mm foam core ! Maybe a video of the layout at the exhibition, no time now, too much to do before Friday and of course, work gets in the way !

Thanks Kim.

Cheers, Gary.

 

Don't you just love it when you get to the morning of the exhibition and you forgot to install the uncoupling magnets on the layout...??

All is good now. Just spent the last 20 minutes drilling between the sleepers and gluing in 30 magnets with Tarzan Grip ! I'll let these dry off for an hour or so before I pack everything up and load the car.

Cheers, Gary.

 

Thank you Ralph and Echidna.

P1MRC is all about sharing our railways and ideas. We all learn from one another.

I can now say that Waspen Street was well received from the casual observers at the exhibition. Plenty of questions were asked and a lot of people were impressed with the small built in sector plate. Whoever said "I don't have the room for a layout" now say, "This is great, I never thought of that before or a small layout like this !"

Hopefully Waspen Street has planted a seed in some peoples mind and the small/micro layouts will live on !!

Cheers, Gary.

 

...

...and I have been fertilizing my OO and it just won't grow...!

Cheers, Gary.

 

I thought I'd dig out Waspen Street and pose a few former LMS engines...

Or the period pic...

Cheers, Gary.