A little progress (not a lot)

For those of you trying to follow my meanderings with this project I must apologise for the lack of postings recently. It has not been intentional. A situation has arisen that means any spare time has to be spent stripping ................. wall paper, from six rooms plus hall stairs and landing of a three bedroomed house. Then all I've got to do is redecorate, all in evenings and weekends plus any days holiday I can take at short notice. Oh well I didn't have much else to do in my spare time !!! If anybody wants to buy a house by the sea with a 22' x 13' garage (suitable for a model railway room), give me a shout!

With all that said I've been able to find a few moments here and there to work on the quarter scale model.

It's starting to come together but I still have a little bit to do.

I was hoping to be able to hide all entries/exits by well placed trees but the exit to the Bodmin North line is being difficult to mask. Looking through the trees, up river, it is easy to mask both exits at this end of the layout. As you progress further towards the signal box and level crossing it gets more difficult to mask the Bodmin North exit.

Looking up river.

Looking towards Bodmin North exit from opposite the wharf siding.

Also I have been thinking about adding a provender store on the wharf siding not typical on this stretch of line but thought it might add a little more interest. At the moment I think it unbalances this end of the layout so I am undecided about whether to include it. If I do include the store, the siding will have to move slightly closer to the running line to give a little more room around the store.

With provender store

Without provender store

After trying the cottage in a couple of positions I've decided that it looks best in the position shown on the photograph above, which is roughly its actual location. It seems to balance the signal box in this position and stops the signal box looking like an orphan on that side of the track.

There is a lot more undergrowth to be added. In all the photographs I have seen the bank at the back looks heavily covered with trees and bushes. The level crossing also needs to be represented in some form along with the gates at the entrance to the Wharf siding. I am also going to play around with adding more trees and bushes at the front of the layout as again this edge seemed overgrown in the 1960s. At the front the trick will be adding enough to indicate this overgrown vegetation but still allow good viewing angles between and through the trees.

I could really do with another site visit to get a true feeling for the place and take a few shots of the cottage and road area around the level crossing.

Possible Locomotives

 Class 22

Just discovered Genesis Kits and their Class 22 pilot scheme loco kit (D6300 - D6305). These were all shedded at Laira shed during my chosen period. As yet I haven't turned up any photographic evidence that they would have been used on the Bodmin General to Wadebridge duties but one would be a good addition to my collection.

In stock to build I already have one old MTK kit which is earmarked to be D6339 as seen on the branch in 1962 near Grogley Halt. This will be built with the split headcodes (two roller blind route indicator panels) and finished in green with yellow warning panels and the 25kV warning signs. I also have a Silver Fox Models resin kit which is earmarked to be D6315 as seen at Wadebridge in 1961. This one has the folding head code discs and will be finish in all over green livery (no yellow front ends).

Recently, while scanning though one of the railway magazines in a newsagent (should have bought the mag really), I read that Dapol are going to produce a model of a Class 22. It's like waiting for a bus.

Beattie Well Tank

Kernow Models have come up trumps with their proposed model of a Beattie Well Tank. I've been putting off buying a kit for one of these locos as I'm not sure of my skills at soldering brass kits together. OK the model will be OO but hopefully not too difficult to re-gauge. At the pace I am going, Ultrascale may have a conversion pack ready by the time I need to run a Beattie ..... here's hoping. I've just got to decided which one to order out of the three they are proposing to produce.

Beattie Well Tank 30586

 I've been browsing the web for photos and discovered this little gem.

What an excellent photo of the one that did not survive into preservation.

Taken 17th July 1962 and can be viewed as part of ricsrailpics collection on Flicker. He has published many photos from the 1960's up to the present day.

Getting side tracked (again)

With all this talk about pink foam on '4mm scale agonies' blog and using it for baseboard construction, it got me thinking about my proposed quarter scale model of Boscarne. I purchased some foamboard weeks ago just for this purpose but it has been languishing beneath my bench waiting for me to pluck up the courage to make a start ever since. I say courage but the will is probably more to the point. I've never really seen the need to build a scale model of a proposed project before. I know Mr. Rice and Mr. Norman advocate it as good practice but I've always thought I held a good picture in my head of what I wanted to achieve. With my Boscarne Junction layout I am/was having problems with deciding how to make a start on the baseboards, especially the Y shaped board at the junction end. This started to convince me that building a quarter scale model might be a good idea.

After wangling a day off in lieu, for some weekend work I did a few weeks ago, I decided to make a start. Should I have finished off the A7 point kit? That might be a good question and yes ought to be my answer but I felt in the right mood to attempt something new today. Also I have to build baseboards before I can install and use any points I construct. I also have to decide on how to construct the baseboards. So the point can wait a few more days.

This model is nowhere near finished but it is being a very useful exercise. It has already given me a better idea how to tackle the Y shape baseboard. It has also highlighting that I had not thought enough about the ground contours in Y of the junction. As you can see it is this area that I am still working on. It's very easy to draw contours on paper but to see them in 3D brings them to life.

I am not sure how far I will detail this model over the next few weeks. Adding trees of some description should help me decide how to break up the layout into frames to create views that the trains can pass though. Adding the few buildings is also a must just to check sizing and position. I am still not sure about adding the cottage/house that is behind the signal box at the real location. Need to give this some thought, but to be honest I've never been that confident about scratch-building buildings.

It's a shame there is not a building on the same side of the railway as the wharf side but on the opposite side of the road to act as a scenic break for the fiddle yard. If I do build the cottage/house it might fall foul of my fictitious history and be moved to this position ..... would probably balance this end of the layout better by being moved.

Sorry about the quality of the photos but I had to use my phone to take them as my camera is playing up.