Author

Timothy Watson

Date

15th July 2014

Reading Time

3 minutes

As promised a  photo of VIA EBORACUM.  I thought I would take up garden railways.  It now needs the road way granite setts and pavements and of course a lot of painting: yellow London stock brick.  In the end, I lined all of the arches, as these days digital cameras can get low trackside views all too easily!  There will be another factory entrance cut into the rear wall at the extreme RH end.

It’s been a little while since the last missive so I thought it was time to update on layout matters.  As you know, our last outing was to the Preston show in March, but Mike did also take Mrs W’s yard to Acton Depot as publicity for the Club’s Ally Pally exhibition.  The layout then went into to store (as is the pattern of recent years) to allow others to use the lower hall.

 However, the Market Harborough property developer has been busy making mock ups of the main block of shops facing on to both York Way and Gasworks Tunnel prior to letting.  These look very exciting and complicated in roof form.  One of them will play host to a quite well known 30’s wall advert, indicating petrol at 1/6 a gallon, 7.5p in new money, which features in a famous picture of and A3 and A4 heading north from Gasworks Tunnel.  We felt that an undertakers would be appropriate to include in the block, with the close proximity of the cemetery building: any volunteers for names, bearing in mind our naming policy on the layout?  

The San Francisco branch is working on the houses that face Randells Road and still exist (hence the name of this part of the layout being known as Randall’s Knob).  I will dust off the Cally Road tube station drawings for making the components of York Road station, which will feature in part, at the very southern tip of the layout.  In the meantime, my summer holiday caravan project has been the conversion of the temporary York Way Viaduct  to a permanent structure (as usual on our layout, temporary can mean anything between 15 weeks and 15 years: the latter in this case).  Of this the Romans would be proud, henceforth it is to be known as the VIA EBORACUM.  The viaduct has used acres of Slaters brick plastikard and some natty 10 thou thick styrene arches that Mike cut out using a CAD driven Sillhouette cutter.  There are 21 arches all told and it will make a very impressive back stop to the goods yard view when complete,  This should be relatively soon as I have some recovery time from a recent hernia repair operation (photos to follow, of the bridge, not the operation). The viaduct and Randall’s Knob area could be especially busy with vehicular traffic on it: offers of vehicles gratefully received.

On the loco front, a Dapol A3 was converted to fine scale in the early new year and then weathered by Tim Shackleton in the spring.  The effect is very good for a clean working engine, as can be seen in the photo, but I may well change the boiler handrails: in the flesh they look OKish.  The wonky cab side lettering was a feature of Papyrus.  Tim has also weathered a J39, but that needs converting to FS.

Our next outing has been in negotiation for some time and is very exciting.  We will be  showing the layout alongside ‘Gresley Beat’  – the OO one with all the right notes, not in the right order – in the Granary Warehouse in KX Goods Yard in the Central St Martins College of Arts (http://www.kingscross.co.uk/central-saint-martins) on the 11th & 12th October.  Setting up will be on the Friday.  We will have three twin rooms for accommodation of out of town operators.  

In order to meet this October deadline, the layout will be setting up at Keen House on the 21st September, but probably getting the bits out the previous Sunday 14th and Thursday 18th.  We need to re-wire the Copenhagen Tunnel board on the Holloway Bank south section and get the goods lines working independently: perhaps with their own temporary panel for this show.   The down goods line will also need a good deal of track snagging for running also.  We will have a working week end on the 4th and 5th October.

Finally, in this year of momentous anniversaries e.g. 1914 and the out break of the Great War, it is also worth remembering that we cut the first timber for Copenhagen Fields in August 1984.  I attach some photos that show how little the team has changed in thirty years!