Progress with Porthminster

During the course of winter I had to take a break from Porthminster to build a small fold-up South Australian Railways layout for a presentation I had to give at a Convention in September. (See left hand photo at top of this page - a post on that layout will be forthcoming). Once that was out the way, I constructed the platforms at Porthminster and Penwith stations. Construction was somewhat challenging with curved platform faces and very few straight edges.

All track ware then wired to four operating panels, one at Porthminster, the branch terminus, one at the hidden sidings, one at Penwith Junction right behind the Bay roads of the branch, and one at the main goods yard at Penwith Station. The plan is to have three operators (or four if needed) to operate the layout at exhibitions. Some tricky wiring with assisting relays aided the switching of the diamond crossing and single slip at Penwith Junction, and the scissors crossing. I also installed a four speaker digital sound system to pipe steam train sounds around the layout.

Once thoroughly tested, the layout was pulled down and the modules were taken outside the house so the track could be painted. A light rust colour for the rails was first applied (at 45 degrees to the track to cover the sides of the rails) then Rail Sleeper Brown was sprayed over the top (at 90 degrees) to cover the sleepers which were over-sprayed with the Rust.

the track having been spray painted was ready for ballasting. The masking
tape around the platform faces to protect them was removed just prior to ballasting.

Some thoughts into where the point rodding would go were needed. Positioning between tracks needed to be sorted out so rows of foundations could be glued in before ballasting.

Point rodding supports glued in and painted before ballasting.

Ballasting then commenced with the layout set up again. I installed separators (20thou plasticard) between the modules to prevent them sticking together when the ballast glue was applied. The standard mix of PVA glue and water was used after applying a spray of water and detergent.

The plastic separators needed to stop the modules from being stuck together.

With all the ballasting done, the rails were cleaned up and more testing was needed to clear any faults with point motor operations or bits of ballast in frogs and checkrails. A few showed up where the blades had stuck, but were easily remedied with the application of water and some cleaning up.

Penwith Junction freshly ballasted just before gluing.

In October I attended a national convention of the British Railway Modellers Association during which there was a modelling completion. I entered the two station buildings I had scratchbuilt for Penwith Station for the Lineside Structures Trophy. Winning the trophy was a bonus and was the icing on the cake for a good weekend away! The prototype I chose was Radley Station, which fit nicely into the platform arrangement I designed for Penwith. Radley Station also had a nice covered footbridge linking the two platforms and there will be one made to fit the same arrangement in Penwith.

The Main and Island platform buildings for Penwith. The footbridge will be
placed at the near end of the buildings.

The two tunnel portals have now been painted and weathered, glued into position to allow scenery landscaping to get under way.

The Penwith Junction portal painted and weathered. Inside the entrance there is stone walling
extending about 200mm inwards. Flywire with newspaper support is ready for plastering.

 A parting scene for this post is the 517 Class hauling a couple of four wheeled coaches through the scissors. Penwith Signal Box sits in the end of the platform with the four doll bracket signal sitting proudly opposite!

TO BE CONTINUED!