1:1 Modelling

Those of you who have visited, or have relatively good memories will know that a "feature" we inherited when we moved here was a rather ugly shed. 

The original plan was to run the line behind it, alongside the dyke and the trees to create a semi-tunnel. A miscommunication with our fencing contractor put paid to that idea. Instead we've gone down the route of some 1:1 scale modelling of a Col Stephens style building.

The corrugated roofing is 3mm corrugated bitumen sheet which is highly recommended and I have a few other projects in mind that will make use of it, including winter quarters for Teddy.  

At some point the shed will be replaced with a garden office/ railway room, but since at the moment it is being used solely for storage we decided against installing windows. Instead we have used garden mirrors.

There are a few more jobs to do, like adding some enamel signs and a dummy ticket office window, but overall I'm quite pleased with the result..

Potato Railways

At some point shortly after moving here I managed to lose my copy of the Oakwood Press book on the Lincolnshire Potato Railways - just at the time when it would have been most useful.

Finding a replacement was made more difficult by the ridiculous prices being charged on well known sites. Fortunately sanity finally prevailed and the price dropped form hundred of pounds to under fifteen pounds.  It also meant I got the newer 2005  edition.

Another plus is that I am now familiar enough with the area to be be able to turn the black and white maps into something a little more... I would say  3D...but anyone who knows the area knows even in real life it is mostly in 2D.

I remembered enough of the book to already know where some of the lines had run, such as Vine House Farm, and Nocton, of course. In some cases it has been a surprise to discover that lines existed in places I'd already visited with no idea .

And then there is this, on the A17 just South of the Fendyke Bridge. I've driven past it a few times and wondered if it was a fuel tank linked to one of the tramways. These weren't used for the locos themselves, but the railways supplied them for fuel to be used by the tractors.




But it turns out it isn't.

Turn around 180 degrees though and you come across this, which I'd never noticed




And it turns out this was a loading bank at the end of the Moulton Marsh Light Railway

Two of the loading banks from the Lawyers Farm line can also still be found around Holbeach St Matthew.







At Whaplode Manor a transhipment shed still stands


In

At other places traces are harder to find.


Here  you can just make out what was a loading dock on the Wraggmarsh House railway, and that agricultural shed to the left is where the line's good shed used to be. At the end of the muddy lane to the left was the well known Cauldwell's Jetty on the River Welland, served by the steam tug Leo.

Finally I believe this is the location of the front cover picture of the book.

Ho! for Holbeach

I do like a nice country show, though I've been spoilt having the Royal on my doorstep at various times of my life. Some are undoubtedly better than others. In recent years we've been to some where we've been in and out in under an hour.

This year was my first visit to the Holbeach Town and Country Fayre, a somewhat grandiose title which I suspect is partly tongue in cheek.

Some shows have a strong emphasis on livestock, some on country sports, and others just feel like pop up shopping malls. Holbeach though seems to have a definite emphasis on vintage machinery, without being a fully fledged steam fair. The downside of this is that you would be hard pressed to say there is something for the whole family. As a result I didn't get to spend anywhere near as much time as I would have liked. Next year I'll cycle up on my own.

Meanwhile, indoors

One of the quirks of our new home is that the lack of space indoors means that small scale modelling is even more dependent on the weather than progress on the 7 1/4".

Bits of Teddy don't tend to get blown by the wind into the lawn, never to be seen again.

This is my roundabout way of explaining a lack of obvious progress on the OO9 front.  With nicer weather surely on the way though  I've invested in the last few additional purchases I think I needed.

Most of which are visible in this photo. Brilliant service from Narrow Planet as you would expect and also from the Ffestiniog's model shop.

Ignore the Minitrains locos, since they are purely chassis donors. Like Cadeby itself the loco to stock ratio will be on the high side though.

Not all of the models will be built as runners, so pretty much the same as the prototype.

Call that a point kit...

...this is a point kit, at least in 7 1/4" gauge.

I remember being really excited when I opened my first C+L Finescale EM gauge point kit. In contrast I was underwhelmed by this offering from a well known supplier of  5" and 7 1/4" gauge railways. To give one example, those check rails are just aluminium angle.In fairness I have not included  the sleepers in this photo, because they are both too short and too narrow for my planned use. Instead I've substituted ones cut from tanalised roofing batten.

Although the kit is sold as being a 10ft radius LH or RH turnout I'm actually building it as a wider radius wye point. In EM I would have used Templot, but in this gauge I just went with some basic school boy geometry scribbled on the back of a scrap of paper. 

The instructions it came with were also pretty dire, so I'm basically following Geoff's excellent advice on building EM gauge turnouts but scaling it up. I won't say that I'm feeling confident about the outcome at the moment, but I'm working on the basis that pretty much anything I do during construction can be undone and redone with less effort than in 4mm.

Jigsaw

With the slabs lifted it is amazing how much easier it is to visualize options for the next stage of track laying. The equation I'm trying to solve is to run a line into the existing big shed  that will cope with the largest likely visiting loco whilst also continuing the freight only running line through 180 degrees to lead to the other wood shed.

I think I'm beginning to get there.

I suspect though I'm going to have to make use of some modelling tricks to provide a visual separation between the lines, to avoid it all looking too busy and to blend in some unattractive aspects.

The ELR Turns A Corner

Well not really. This is an illusion of progress.

OK it was optimistic of me to suggest the ELR might have doubled in length by now, but for once it isn't my procrastination to blame. The main villain has been the weather. It came close to forcing the abandonment of the first bulk delivery of ballast, and digging out a trackbed by yourself in the driving rain is not fun.

On top of which I have been re-working the plan a little based on trading off different compromises, for an end result that I hope will be a lot better than if I'd just ploughed on.

But on Sunday the lack of an extension towards the drive led to a loss of both slate traffic and that most quintessential of minimal railway cargoes...manure.

So obviously it was time to start work on the planned extensions, And obviously I've started with the other end of the line.

My bank holiday was spent lifting the foundations of the old kennels and relaying the slabs for what will eventually become the station at the end of the passenger carrying section, and the stock shed area.