Structures
Coal Stage
The first structure for the layout was a coal stage.
I’ve had the sleeper sized wood for a long time – I think I got it from John Flack in the mid 1980’s (anybody remember him?). It is beautifully fine grained and quite hard as I discovered when I tried to ‘distress’ it. I used a razor saw blade to rough up the surface by dragging it down the length of the wood and a fine tipped blade to break up the ends of each piece.
I realised in my haste to get something built that I should have added rail spike holes and rust staining from the rails during the preparation but these were easily added afterwards (to 14mm gauge of course).
The wood was treated with EDM Models ‘Weathered Wood Stain’ which is very easy to use and, for me, gives the effect I want. A little bit of dusting with weathering powder to give some rust staining where the rails would have been and around the Grandt Line nut & bolt moldings finished it off nicely.
All that was needed was a bit of coal and the job was done. I had some O14 coal from Paul Martin (EDM Models) so it is not only the right scale, but also the right gauge!
Diesel Fuelling Point
The diesel fuelling point is from a Wrightlines wagon kit but without the channel framed skip chassis. I’ve just mounted it on some timber blocks which I shall bed in to the scenery when the glue is dry.
Finished with a mixture of paints including Humbrol ‘Metalcote’ which can be burnished when dry to give a metallic sheen. A light dusting with weathering powders and a dab of rust or oil wash completed the job. The finished model was quite heavy and I was worried about it staying on the layout during transport so a soldered and inverted ‘U’ shaped bit of wire to the underside of the platform (which is whitemetal) which locates in two drilled holes through the base board. Probably unnecessary but I tend to keep my layouts for a long time and I would have been disappointed if I had to keep fixing it back on!
Office/Hut
Inspired by my progress, I started on the hut that will form the basis of the run-round loop (I can’t really call it a station!). While I did have some scale timber, I thought it was about time I used some of the coffee stirrer sticks that I have collected over the years.
Front and back walls, the front complete with battens over the gaps in the coffee stirrer planks and with nail holes (though they are quite hard to see).
Now with the end frames and some boarding in place and the start of the door.
I wanted to fit an interior, which would include a table/desk, chairs, cupboard and stove. It’s sort of an office/mess hut (I think) as it would have recorded whatever came out of the quarry.
I needed to distress the building a bit as it needed to look old and un-cared for. Initially I had a go at the door to try and simulate rotting planks at the bottom.
It’s a bit of a cruel enlargement and my camera struggled to lock on the focus! However, I am very pleased with the result.
Water Tower
The water tower is sort of based on the Talyllyn Railway tower at Dolgoch but with a steel tank rather than timber and represents the tower left behind by the original railway which carried on to the left. As such it won’t really be suitable for the coaling stage so there will be some interesting maneuvers to both water and coal the steam engines – unless I find a very long hose!
The water tower base is 4mm scale Wills stone sheet with the corners filled as required to simulate real stonework.
It was only after I had agonized over what the tank should look like and started it that I remembered taking a photo of the restored tank at Beddgelert! It was too late to change my plan so I thought I would add Tichy Trains rivets (from EDM Models) to the corner angles. What a pain!!
The valve is from Andy Duncan, the filling bag is from thin lead sheet and the overflow pipe is brass tube with Roy C Link cast brass flanges (now KB Scale). I have had the flanges for many years as I bought them when Roy first produced them – I knew I would have a use for them (at last).
Quarry Hoppers
After some considerable thought about the quarry and the wagon loading hoppers which I wanted work so that I could load the wagons I realised that I was making it all way too complicated. The original idea was to have hoppers by the side of the track with chutes that would lower down before opening gates and letting the stone fall into the wagons by gravity. As an alternative my thoughts turned to an over the track hopper as in Andy Cuckson’s Snailbeach District railways book. Then I remembered a Narrow Gauge & Industrial Railway Modelling Review article by Roy C Link about using a Ratio coal hopper kit in 7mm scale. This had inspired me to buy one of the kits which had been gathering dust while I though of something to do with it.
Initially I though I may need 2 kits but then I realised that I could make a 2-hopper unit from a single kit and some plastic sheet. I decided to use two of the sides (the ones with the smaller opening at the bottom) and cut one of the rectangular sections that form the top box area to extend two of these sections to make the unit rectangular when looking from above.
It has taken a bit of trial and error with the hopper openings to reduce spillage as they have to be some height above the wagons to clear the locos.
Overall I am now happy that they work well enough. I think I will route tubing to each hopper, through the back scene and into the fiddle yard area. My current intention is to pour an appropriate amount of material to fill a wagon from the fiddle yard to keep delivery as simple as possible. Time will tell! A bit of experimenting with the stone delivery system confirmed that the angle of the delivery tube is too shallow to rely on gravity alone but a length of wooden dowel used as a plunger to push the stone down the tube seems to work okay. Now all I need to do is work out some sort of trough so I can fill the tube without scattering stone around the fiddle yard but still use the dowel as a plunger.
This actually proved easier than I had thought as the plastic tube I used for the delivery system was household overflow pipe from the local DIY store. This was cut to length and inverted ‘T’ pieces added. Stone (chinchilla dust) is loaded through a funnel into the top opening of the inverted ‘T’ and a wooden dowel is used as a plunger to push the stone into the hopper. A spare wagon body is used as both a measure and scoop for the stone to make sure the right amount is loaded into each wagon. It isn’t fool proof as you have to position each wagon accurately and I now have a mini vacuum to periodically recover accidental spillages.
I concocted a building to fit over the hoppers which I built from styrene sheet and Grandt Line window moldings. I was running low on the Duncan Models corrugated iron sheet which is (sadly) no longer available and I didn’t have enough to cover these buildings so I resorted to Wills plastic corrugated asbestos sheet. Although this is intended for 4mm scale the corrugated asbestos has a bigger pitch that the ordinary Wills corrugated sheets and I thought I could get away with using it. This building is removable just in case I need to get access to the hoppers. A 4mm scale steel chimney from Ratio finished off the detailing of this simple structure.
There are more construction photos on the Structures Gallery page
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