Wilmington Light Railway

[WLR_CD]

This is the method I use to fix the buildings down so they do not to disappear in the wind. Pleased to say that so far it has worked very well.

I make up some PVC Foamex turnbuckles and fix them to the steel base sheet of the railway with stainless steel self tappers.



Then it is just a simple case of twisting the turnbuckle and the building is clamped in place, to remove, just twist the turnbuckle and lift off the building.



Finally back fill with gravel to hide fixing, this is the reason my buildings have deeper bases to the walls of 15mm.



The same method was used for the engine shed and signal box.





Martin

[WLR_CD]

We are now at July 2021.

I have been trying some artificial grass off-cuts that I was given, pleased with how it breaks up the mass of gravel and starting to blend in with the surrounding foliage.





Five more wagons have arrived at the railway and joined the queue for weathering.





Martin

[WLR_CD]

I have started on Stage 3 of the line, so it was also a good time to update the plan.

The track in red is only in my head at the moment and actual layout yet to be finalised. The line is designed primarily for operation with a concession to some continuous running should that be required on the track in front of the main workshop, although that may change. This currently houses the 16mm layout First Sunday in June and the 7mm layouts The Yard and Whiteoak Light Railway (since sold and being exhibited by the new owner). These layouts will ultimately release the space for a 28 feet by 3 feet intensively industrial section of the railway, in style along the lines of Whiteoak and Theobald's Yard but in 16mm scale, featuring working RC cranes and RC 16mm scale lorries. The garage workshop will give some space for another station and some industry now the car restoration has finished. In the colder months we will be able to do running indoors and just sending the trains out in the cold!

A very recent development has been the demise of the greenhouse. This had become in recent years a shed with many windows. My wife has decided she would like a garden studio instead for her to expand her craft making hobby, she wanted it with a covered seating area, I did not need asking twice. The covered seating will make a nice operating position!

The building has been ordered and I have about a month to get the groundwork done. My daughter suggested finishing it to look like a station, I have not passed that suggestion on yet!



While on one of my regular skip emptying days (every two and a half weeks), Ken cut up some more roofing sheet for stage 3 of the railway.



From my cutting list, I had a good supply of sheeting.



When downsizing my company, I had a load of metal desk legs which I kept for that 'might come in useful one day' moment.

Here they are being adapted with Dexion angle.



These are then bolted together with long lengths of Dexion.

Here you can see the hedging plants which were all raised from cuttings when Ken trimmed his hedging. They will eventually reach the height of the layout and screen the supports from view.

The greenhouse in the background in this last few days has gone.



The view showing where it joins Stage 2.



From this viewpoint I am about 12 feet in front of the main workshop, this shows the relationship between Stage 1 (on the right) alongside the conservatory and house, to Stage 2 around the greenhouse, then along to Stage 3 behind the garage.



Now with the roof sheeting in place and the edging painted black ( I could not get on with white).





I needed to cut some more hardwood track support strips, luckily I still have a lot of the old hardwood window frames from when my mum had hers changed to UPV, it seems a waste to creosote and bury in gravel this lovely wood.

Here using the bandsaw to rip it into 12mm square strips. I had now updated my bandsaw to one with roller bearings rather than graphite sticks to guide the blade, much better with bearings.



A batch that has been painted in creosote.



Throughout this build I have managed to get for free or very cheaply the materials for the railway. Even the track, 99% of it is secondhand bought cheaply or been given to me over many years for the one day project.

The same is happening with the hard landscaping. Our village Facebook page has resulted in a good selection of materials, my latest gain is all these brindle paving bricks for free, the only proviso is they needed to be collected by 2pm or they are going in the skip, the local builder had finished a job and was clearing the site. Four trips later they were all home. This is very nearly a full pallet load of Marshall blocks that are over £200 to buy.



Martin

[WLR_CD]

Occasionally we get overnight visitors to the railway, Stage 2 has had some earthworks excavation.
The earthworks and plants did not work as well as expected and since been replaced with artificial grass.



Something has been digging out the inside of the engine shed. The dolls house door hinges were an early failure, I will be scratch building new ones in brass. Once I am fully happy with the track layout in this area the gravel will go and be replaced with dyed cement to represent oil and coal stained surface, this will be more in keeping with an engine servicing area.



Nature and man-made combined.



Martin

[WLR_CD]

Track being roughed out. I have increased this main curve to 6 foot radius to ease platform clearances, but this will entail the need for three custom built curved points.



For trialing, I set up the longest train at Wilmington station and set it off to the new station (not named yet), for fun I also timed the journey. In this view you can see how the platform timbers have weathered.



It took just over three minutes...



...to get here.



For the main curve I stripped the sleepers from the rail and used a rail bender to form the curve so it will hold the shape better than just relying on screw fixings to hold it.



I have been trying out Peco G45 fishplates rather than the flimsy SM32 ones. Very impressed, much stronger and have a larger capacity to take up an expansion and contraction. The shorter flimsy ones sometimes creep along the rail and cause a break when they reach the end, with not much to grip they can be a fiddle to slide back, unlike the G45 ones. These bigger fishplates also make it very easy to join Peco track to Tenmille track. Not cheap at about £7.00 for 18 but I think worth the expense for certain situations.



Martin

[WLR_CD]

July 2021...

Work on the railway and surrounding area has been somewhat sporadic of late, due to various reasons in no particular order work/weather/being bothered to actually do anything!

The greenhouse was dismantled with most of the contents and some of glass sold on or given away. Leaving tomato plants and paving stones.



I used some of the old greenhouse base as shuttering for the new base and a trench dug for the power cable.



A part order of supplies arrived, still have another bulk bag of sharp sand to come, along with 110 paving slabs that are currently waiting a delivery from the manufacturers (there was a huge backlog due to Covid etc.).



The cabin kit arrived two weeks early, so I had to clear out one of the sheds to store it until ready to put up. It stayed in the shed much much longer than originally expected and became a pain being in the way. It would be a further nine months before it got erected, purely down to difficulties getting the balance of the building materials.



I put down and compacted the MoT Type 1 as a base for the new main path.



The base has been cast and a start made on the edging stones. To the right of these stones will go a short section of two foot narrow gauge track which will have a disused wagon sat at one end as a bit of a feature.



Nature has been taking over the railway.



It was a good excuse to run a fruit picker special.







We had some visitors during the night who obviously did not like the initial track plan, so moved it around and left their muddy footprints behind!



They also chewed my builders line.



Cobwebs have appeared on some buildings and something has nibbled the corner of the chimney.





The crew came round during the week and we discussed the track plan for the main shed (28' x 12'), with two entry points, which may reduce to one in the final plan.

The dotted boards are module boards that some are building at home as a standalone layout that can be plugged into the garden line, also the four straight boards of our layout First Sunday in June can also be plugged in here. The garden line is being built for operation with plenty to do on operating days.



Finally I have acquired one of the 16mm Narrow Gauge Association Victory live steam kits which were released seven years ago (now 10 years). Luckily Roundhouse still do the bits that they offered at the time, but the original boiler manufacturer does not seem to be about anymore.

I contacted the 16mm NGA and by chance one of the original test builders of the kit wanted to build another one and hit the same snag with boilers as me. He has done some investigation and may have sourced an alternative suitable boiler with a few added advantages. He is doing some testing and will let me know the details if it is workable, failing that I will just make a battery powered version.

I have a fondness for Victory because quite often I can be seen on the footplate of the real thing most months at the Bredgar & Wormshill Light Railway.



Martin

[WLR_CD]

Roll on a few months to late November 2021...

I have at last finished the main base groundwork ready for the 108 paving slabs which turned up this week. I will be glad when this is done and can get back to some modelling.

Temperature has dropped lately which may affect progress!





The slabs.





Martin

[WLR_CD]

I had a package from Roundhouse arrive with hopefully all the bits I will need to complete the Victory kit as RC steam. I went for a Billy boiler and wrapper because the original boiler manufacturer is unavailable.



Santa delivered some Binnie kits to the railway.



Martin

[WLR_CD]

January 2022...

I subscribe to the digital version of Garden Rail magazine, late last year they sent out a survey with the promise of being put into a draw. I do a number of surveys but never win anything.

To my delight I received an email from Warner Publications to say I had been chosen as the winner of an I.P Engineering Colonial Railcar kit and what gauge would I like 32mm or 45mm?

This will come in handy because I need a few rail buses for the garden line, I shall enjoy adapting this and adding detail.



Martin

[WLR_CD]

Late January 2022...

In an effort to kick start my modelling mojo, a start was made on the various Binnie kits that I got for Christmas. I do enjoy Binnie kits, especially batch building, I find it therapeutic.

I start with squaring up the chassis sides.



For the bolsters, I never like the kit method of melting the pivot pin over a washer. I like mine to be bolted so it helps with painting and maintenance later if needed, so I drill and tap the pivot 8BA.



Here pictured with a temporary bolt and washers until I cut out some larger washer plates to suit.



To give them some low down weight, I fill the central channel with Liquid Lead, bonded in with Johnsons Klear. Here are four bolster and two skip chassis.



An update I do is replace the wheel sets with Roy Wood replacement ones, ordered on a Monday, received the following Wednesday. Have made a start on blackening before the weathering process.

This does leave me with 16 x Binnie wheel and axle sets, these will come in handy for scratch built wagon projects.



Martin

[WLR_CD]

I have on and off experimented trying to produce reasonably looking 16mm scale corrugated iron.

The start point is a Friskars card crinkling roller, given to me by my wife after a buy up of someones craft supplies now they had stopped the hobby.



I had tried various thicknesses of foil pie containers, the main problem finding a big enough flat area, but even then the foil was a bit too thin to be practical for buildings. Beer cans were another option, but getting them flat to start with and stay flat and hold the ridges was not great, so the project was put to one side. Apart from that you get a bit wobbly emptying the cans!

It was while perusing a FaceBook group that someone in the USA had found 36 gauge ally sheet with good results. I searched in the UK, but 100m rolls were a bit more than I wanted. So I ordered from the same supplier in the USA via Amazon and got a 12 foot by 1 foot roll for £16 delivered. I have since found UK suppliers but they want £8.99 for 3 foot x 1 foot. The Amazon delivery did not take too long until it got to our PO and they sent it to the wrong sorting office.

Anyway, enough of the ramble, here are a couple of pictures from a quick test, these are scale 8 foot x 3 foot sheets, the ridges are just under 4mm across the peaks, so not far off 3 inches full size, good enough for me and the sheets are nice and firm.

Next will be some trials with acid to distress some sheets, but will wait for better weather for this outside job.





Another Amazon purchase was for these small quilting clips. I found a pack of 110 clips for £8.99 and very good they are, although some seemed to have gone and appeared on the wife's craft bench!



Martin

[WLR_CD]

Back to the garden railway, now May 2022.

I have at last finished the slabs and pointing, much to the relief of my back!

Now waiting for a break in the weather to build the log cabin/craft studio, after which I can get back onto building the railway itself.



A few weeks later we got that break.

With a break in the weather and help from my daughter and partner, who had built a cabin from the same supplier two years ago, we got the main building work done in two days.

Setting out, crucial to get this bit right, otherwise you hit trouble later on, so time well spent.



The railway became a good short term wood store!



Starting to take shape.



Walls went up quick, now the roof takes shape.



Fixing the roofing shingles down.



After two days we had a watertight building.



Over the following week I got one coat of preservative on the outside apart from under the porch and two coats inside.
Carpet down inside, desks and cupboards went in. Electrics still to connect up once the boss has decided where she wants the sockets!
More preservative coats to do when I get a chance, then I can put the railway back in place that I took down to give us a bit more working space.

The rest of the garden path to lay, will be glad when it is done.
It will make a useful loco drivers office, but I did not say that!





Our resident fox is not so caring about keeping the patio clean as I am, there are footprints all round the patio!



Martin

[WLR_CD]

Still making progress with the craft cabin, electrics are now installed. The replacement glass panel for the table is due this week, a casualty of the February storm.



Furniture now in place, Denise has started moving her bits and pieces in.



Which meant I was able to put the track bed back in place along the fence, ready for track laying. An advantage of this type of construction, it is easy to take down and put back with just spanners. At the bottom of the picture you can see the hedge cuttings have now reached the top of the trackbed.



I think I may have been rumbled, Denise asked "Why do we have a station clock on the cabin?"



With any spare storage space taken up with the cabin project, it meant the main workshop became a general dumping ground.

Believe it or not, in there somewhere are three layouts, First Sunday in June, The Yard and Whiteoak Light Railway.



This is going to need a lot of sorting out. My daughter is currently refitting her kitchen so has some units going spare before heading to the skip.
Never one to miss out on a kitchen cupboard, I have found this vertical pull out cupboard useful for easy access to my spray cans.



Still got a long way to go with sorting stuff out, but at least I can lay track as and when I get a spare moment.

Martin

[WLR_CD]

Latest purchase for the railway, two signs printed on ally sheet.





Martin

[WLR_CD]

One year later, July 2023!

Progress with the garden railway has been somewhat sporadic, with a number of other things getting in the way.

I am pleased to say my PVC Foamex buildings survived last summer's heat very well.



Unfortunately the signal box steps did not fair so well, not helped by the antics of a certain fox!



Who?

Me?



Who produced rather a lot of cubs, ten in total!



Martin

[Old Man Aaron]

Perfect - absolutely perfect workmanship.

And I'm not even close to being caught up on what you've posted so far.

[WLR_CD]

Over the winter months, as a break from work and to keep things moving with the line, I made a start on painting 30+ wagons that I had built and had sat in primer for a few years.

It was something that I could pick up and put down at will, whether I had 10 mins spare or a few hours, which will explain the various stages each item is at.





These days I work mainly in acrylics for the basic painting. A recent game changer for me is the discovery of Wet Pallets and brush soap.

The wet pallet is, as the name suggests, a pallet that is permanently wet (damp). I found out about these while following various military modelling forums and pages. It is basically a small (Mine is about A5 in size) container with a sealable lid. Contained within is a sponge base layer, on top of which is a permeable replaceable sheet that holds the acrylic paint, these sheets can be washed a number of times before they need replacing. The container is filled with water to the top of sponge, this keeps the permeable sheet damp and dramatically reduces the speed with which acrylic on the pallet dries out. I used to waste a lot of acrylic because it dried out on the pallet before I could use it all.
With the lid sealed on, the acrylic can last up to 1-2 weeks staying workable, very useful when you have created various weathering mixes.

This is my Redgrass Wet Pallet.



Something else I learnt about was da Vinci brush cleaning soap, this helps with cleaning the brushes and keeps the tips in good condition. For many years I have used mild hand soap, some of my sable brushes are over 40 years old from my early art school years, but this brush soap works even better and should well last me out!



Martin

[WLR_CD]

In early summer, I did actually get some track laying done, but it was 1:1 scale with an odd gauge of 22 inches.

It all started when my daughter said it would look good if there was a short length of track in front of the cabin, then it would look like an old station. After sharing that conversation with my friend Ken, a few days later he turned up with a delivery of some sleepers, short lengths of rail, fishplates, a wagon and some ballast.

Some sleepers and rail, there are longer lengths behind the sleepers that you can just make out.



And a wagon which has been standing on a bank of the zig zag of Ken's own 2 foot gauge railway for as long as I can remember.



I wasted no time in getting the sleepers and ballast laid.



Followed shortly after by rail and the wagon. I was short of rail fixings, but sourced the bolts and plates off Amazon, being bright zinc I need to weather them down at some point.



I have managed to sell the idea to my wife as a sort of art installation, luckily some of her friends who have visited liked it, so that is an approval gained for me!

Ken was always puzzled by the provenance of the wagon and where it originated. He cannot even remember getting it, other than as a one of many job lots he bought years ago, but being 22 inch gauge would not run on his own line, so was just dumped on the bank and engulfed by nature for many years.

It is only recently the mystery has been solved as to provenance. Ken found out it is from the Purbeck ball clay mines, having seen some at the Purbeck Mineral & Mining Museum while visiting the Swanage Railway.

Here is a photo of one.



Martin

[WLR_CD]

My initial thoughts of using real turf and actual plants did not fair well in the summer of last year, most died out and frizzled up!



Never been happy with this corner so stripped it all out and started again.



The curve was levelled out using my levelling wagon.



Martin

[ge_rik]

The infrastructure is as well engineered as the railway

Rik