Friday 26 October 2018

Station Building Take Two

I spent a couple of days working on the disassembled Peco kits and they were looking very rough.

Time to try again.

Armed with a screen shot of Dungog station a sheet of Scalescenes brick paper, I cut out a suitable size wall and played around with windows and doors.

Next, I attacked a sheet of Slater's brick styrene sheet and came up with this:


The doors and windows are all Peco components. The glass doors had the side windows cut off. Underneath the three top windows will be an awning which will run the length of the building.

The backing of the windows and doors are about 1mm thick. I decided to make part of the building stick out 25 mm and the end with the solid doors only 5 mm from the back scene.


Between the first and the second top window is a wall. The other two windows will let in some light for the passenger section of the station. I am considering repeating the window arrangement on the rear of the building and to show some interior of the waiting area. I want to have a photo behind the station but I don't know where this will come from as yet.

The next job is to line the heads and sills of the windows give it a coat of primer and then paint the bricks.

As I like lists, so that I know what I'm doing, here are the next steps:

  1. Line the heads and sills of the windows and door frames.
  2. Create the decorative brick columns between the middle windows.
  3. Create the rear wall.
  4. Cut out the awning.
  5. Paint everything.
  6. Work out the interior.
  7. Assemble.
What could possibly go wrong? With luck, I'll be up to painting next week end.

Until next time.

Sunday 21 October 2018

Thinking About the Station Building

The platform was glued and then thoughts turned to what was going on top.

Most of the platform is 30mm deep. There is a short 220 mm section which is 50mm deep. With this in mind, I have three choices: an extreme low relief building in the middle of the platform; a low relief building at the end of the building; or a mix of both.

Before I could work that out, I had to come up with a design. A flat roof art deco style would go well. This is because even with 50mm, there would not be sufficient enough room for the pitched roof to look right.

A couple of good examples are Dungog and Cronulla stations. However, Normanhurst and Thornleigh stations also came to mind - although they don't fit the art deco idea, they have flat roofs and look as though they can be made using Peco office building kits. This is handy as I have a station made using these.


Here is Thornleigh station. I hope Laing and Simmons don't mind me ripping off their image.

On the very first Sapphire Coast Line which I started on the Central Coast, I had made a main station building for the terminus using about 3 packs of the Peco Manyways Office Buildings. It ended up looking a bit like this.


It was never finished and it had to be repaired a couple of times after the wind blew it down of the layout and the cat dragged it down onto the floor.

The similarities are the brown windows at the top of the walls. I could try and take it apart and create a single story version and put a flat awning coming out from the top. After a bit of fiddling around I came up with this. I reckon that I could make it an extreme low relief but low relief for the entrance an include some interior detail. 


At the very least, if it doesn't work, I have plenty of windows and doors and templates to work with.

Here's a view with a train in it. I reckon it might just work.


Until next time.


Thursday 18 October 2018

Back on Track

It has been about eighteen months since I last added something to this blog.

In the meantime, I have finished laying all of the track and I've been happily running trains. I even had one or two running sessions with some mates.

I've also been a little distracted by the extension, Billabong Marina. This is pretty much finished and now I need to focus on the main layout.

For the history, keep scrolling down to read the full story and fictional history of the line.

Where do you start?

Billabong Marina has taught me to start at the back and work forward as you won't damage any of your work when you do more.

With this in mind, I'm starting on the top station.

This location is a fictitious town west and up hill from Eden. It's called Awdry after a town on the last layout and ultimately after the creator of the Railway Series which I'm sure many of us grew up on in one form or another. I needed a name and this was the best one that I could think of at the time.

Here's the station.


It sits on top of the mainline behind Boydtown Yard. This view is from the oil depot. To the right where the MRC is, will be another dairy. The platform will be where the bit of timber is. Opposite the station is a small siding for a couple of cattle vans and maybe a spot for something else to unload.


In the corner is a siding for ballast wagons to be loaded. The idea was for most of this to be hidden but I couldn't hide a full train in there. I had a rethink and made the siding longer. The middle track is the mainline.


I've brought the ballast siding closer. I had thoughts about the blue metal siding in Richmond. A check in one of the Byways of Steam makes it sort of plausible. The siding will no longer be hidden and I can stick a couple of houses in the corner. Three is a little too crowded.

The line in the foreground lead to the brewery. Surely every layout needs one.


It's a Kibri Paulaner brewery kit. However, in making the ballast siding longer, I had to lose some land behind the brewery. The annex on the left had to go.


It will be replaced by Two grain bins. These are Faller kits and will be painted silver to look more like a local variety. The little building on the right might stay. There will be a lot of remote (meaning far away) shunting as this siding is not in easy reach of the operator, so I'll need to play around before I make a final decision.

These adjustments were  done over the the last couple of weeks since the October long week end.

I'm planning to spend 15 minute a day at least on the layout like I did on Billabong Marina. Click here to see the blog for this layout.

Today's effort was more than 15 minutes.

The wood for the platform was cut out. I printed some Scalescenes brick sheets for the brick work, I used the platform kit for the edging stones and tarmac. I've yet to glue the platform top to the wood but here is the result.

Not a bad start.

Until next time.