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.

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