VIC – 0017 – Layout of the Quarter: Shallowford – TCH 119

 

A OO gauge GWR exhibition layout. The use of readily available kits that are well built and sometimes kit bashed shows just what can be achieved with simple products, tools and an eye for detail.

 

The story (otherwise known as the justification for this layout)

 

 

This OO scale model railway layout depicts the small mythical town of Shallowford in South Devon in the UK.  The name, before you ask, is taken from the “Horseman riding by” books of R. F. Delderfield which are set in South Devon.

The layout is constructed with buildings and railway facilities of about 1930 onwards.  Railway infrastructure did not change much in the next 30 years so the layout can be run in any one of three distinct time periods between the late 1930s, and early 1960s.  The layout shows a typical Devon village at one end where the railway emerges from the tunnel whilst at the other end the railway runs into the main town where the station is.  If you look carefully you can see goods facilities for coal, cattle and general merchandise.  The factory is deliberately not named so that it can represent anything you want it to.

As the layout can be run as British railways (Western Region), Great Western pre WW2 and Great Western post WW2, I have locos, rolling stock and road vehicles for all three periods.

 

Layout design

The 20ft long layout is built as a fiddle yard to terminus design on 4 baseboards each 5ft long by 2ft 3ins wide.  This is to enable the layout to be dismantled and transported to exhibitions.  The fiddle yard is under the tunnel which has a village on top of it and is accessible from the rear and the end of the layout.  It has a portable fluorescent lighting strip to help in marshalling trains at exhibitions.  The fiddle yard has four roads served by a fan of points.  The terminus station has two platforms, goods sidings, factory head shunt, and carriage sidings.  There is an engine shed and working turntable.

 

Figure 1 - Shallowford Station with the village in the background

 

 

Track

The track is code 75 OO Peco streamline using the largest available radius points glued on to cork underlay with PVA glue.  I know P4 or EM is better but I choose not to spend my time building track, other folk think differently.

The track is fully ballasted with real stone chips.  I have tried to ensure realism by painting and weathering the track, also adding non working point levers in the sidings.  What I have not yet done is install dummy point rodding, one day perhaps.

 

Couplers and uncouplers.

I have used Kadees with permanent magnets embedded under the track.  Looks good, well not as good as 3 link and screw link couplers, but a lot better than tension locks,  works well so long as you remember where the permanent magnets are.  This takes practice and a certain amount of cursing from my fellow BRMA members at exhibitions when they forget and leave a brake van behind.

I might add that the NEM pockets on modern Bachmann rolling stock are at the wrong height so you need to remove them and drill a hole to take a standard Kadee no 5.  On locos some of the NEM pockets are the right height to take plug in couplers (I use Bachmann Ezy Mates which are plastic).  For the others I tend to cut and pin and reglue the cheap plastic coupler shanks to get the right height rather than mess with an expensive locomotive.

 

Electrics

The fiddle yard relies on the points to isolate the tracks with a dead area at the end of each track to stop overruns.  Points are all operated by slow action Tortoise point motors.  These I fully recommend.  They have polarity changing switches and are far superior to the Behmo ones I have used before.  The track design incorporates two double slips and is divided into just two electrical sections.

Controllers are Gaugemaster.  So far there is no DCC or electrically operated goodies, but in the future who knows?

 

Signals

These are all non-working built from Ratio parts.  I have tried to ensure some accuracy with the right combination of home, distant and starter signals.

 

Figure 2 - Shallowford Station throat pointwork

 

 

Railway buildings

The Station buildings are Ratio, fitted with tiled roofs from the Wills scenic sheets.  I have cut one down to make a smaller building and used a Wills Pagoda hut as well.  The platforms and fencing are also Ratio.  The lamps are Peco just painted in proper GWR colours.

The Goods shed is modified from two Ratio kits.  This has enabled me to build a lean to office and fit some chimneys, which quite changes the character of the original kit.

The engine shed is pure Ratio as are the coaling stage, signal box and cattle dock (2 kits here to give the length).

The factory building is built from an American DPM kit with a Faller chimney and some Ratio bits on the roof.  It is served by a Coopercraft weighbridge and Wills cycle racks.

 

Figure 3 - Pannier 0-6-0T loco on shed and a quiet day at the cattle dock

 

 

Town buildings

The town buildings are a mixture.  The terraced house and shops are from Hornby kits.  These I would commend to anyone so long as you make and paint them properly they convey that lovely British look of rows and rows of identical houses.  The corner shops to the right of the church are scratch built using Wills sheets.  The other side is a Kibri kit sliced in half (it only needs to be low relief) and anglicised using Wills tile roofing and scratch building some British looking chimneys.  I have also cut up a Lima station building to make three separate houses all with the nice stone on the corners, again with scratch built chimneys.  There is one building which is a plastic copy of a Superquick kit.  There is also one Life Like American kit which has been utilised with some modification.  The church is the Hornby one painted and weathered and set in a church yard.

 

The village buildings

The village buildings on the hill include a lot of Dapol cottages, a Wills crossing Keeper’s cottage and old Airfix church and thatched cottage.  There is a Kibri German house with added British looking chimneys plus a couple of old vac formed kits.

Throughout the layout I have made extensive use of minor structures by Wills, Ratio and the like including bus shelters, sheds, outdoor dunnies and the like.  The yard crane is a Mikes Models one, the water tower is Ratio, and the water cranes are Mikes Models again.  Telegraph poles are Ratio as is most of the fencing whilst the walls tend to be from Wills sheets.

 

 

Scenery

I have used expanding two part foam (as used for boat buoyancy) as the basis for all my hills.  It is very light and comes up a bit like Violet Crumble.  You can sculpt it with a Surform plane and cover it with a very thin (and I mean the minimum you can get away with) skim of plaster pre-coloured with acrylic paint.  Roads are card covered in fine ballast for texture.  The back scenes are painted on thin craft wood board with acrylic paint (an airbrush does great clouds).

Trees and foliage are mainly Woodland Scenics trunks but I prefer Heki foliage so that is what I have used.  The grass is mainly Woodlands Scenics with the odd bit of sisal string for the rough tufts.

 

Locomotives

These are all fitted with real coal, crew, brass name and number plates and Kadee couplers.  They are from all the usual sources of Bachmann, Hornby and Heljan for the diesels.  I will allow green (Great Western diesel hydraulics) diesels but not blue ones!

Steam locos are the usual Pannier tanks, large and small Prairie tanks, auto-tanks and 0-6-2 coal tanks.  I have far too many 4-6-0 locos including Kings, Castles, Counties, Halls, Manors and Granges.  I also have a Dean Goods and Collett 0-6-0 tender loco plus a couple of Moguls.

I have also been tempted by a Black 5 (apparently in BR days they got everywhere!) and a Stanier 2-8-0 (built at Swindon during the war!) from Hornby, plus an austerity 2-8-0 from Bachmann.  All of these modern locos run extremely well and make operating the layout that much easier.

 I have a full set of diesel hydraulics with a warship from Bachmann and a Hymek and a beautiful Western from Heljan.  These would all, I swear, run on wet grass! They really do have outstanding running qualities.

 

Coaches

These are almost exclusively from Bachmann and Hornby.  I tend to run them mainly in rakes with Kadee couplers on the ends of the rakes, which allows me to put dummy corridor connections between the corridor coaches.  The Bachmann Collett and BR mark I coaches are excellent, whilst the B set and Autocoach from Hornby are still quite acceptable, especially if you paint the droplights brown and paint the interiors.

My siphons are a mixture of Lima, Dapol and Hornby and are supplemented by some kit built ones from Ian Kirk, along with a full brake from the same source.  I have a couple of other oddities like a Python and a Beetle from Parkside Dundas kits.

 

Wagons

 

These are the usual ready to run from Bachmann, Hornby and Dapol.  I also have some kit built stock from Ian Kirk, Ratio, Parkside Dundas, Slaters, Dapol and Cooper Craft.  I have tried to standardise on Bachmann metal wheel sets on plastic axles.  This stops the wagon axles being grabbed by the permanent magnet uncouplers.  I have far too many private owner wagons because they look nice (don’t we all!). And also far too few wagons from companies other than the Great Western.  Of late I have been building up my stocks of LMS wagons courtesy Bachmann and the slaters kits (very nice).

 

Exhibitions

Because of the nature of the layout it is relatively easy to carry around in trailers or vans to exhibit. As a result it has been to Malkara three times, NMREG once and Wollongong once. Due to my friendly local BRMA members I always have a moving and operating crew.

 

Thanks

 

So thanks to them but not only for operating but for help and suggestions along the way. Special thanks to Mike M. for all his assistance on the wiring side, without him I think I would have had an inoperable layout more times than I care to think about.

 

Thanks also to my wife who not only puts up with the whole thing year in and year out but who also acts as my scenic consultant having been born and brought up in the area in which the layout is set. As a result I have had members of the public come up to me at exhibitions convinced that they have lived in that house or village. Looks like “you can fool some of the people some of the time!”