Crab and Winkle
Active Member
Last year was an interesting year modeling for me I built my first small O gauge layout and a single scenic board depicting a Great Eastern trestle bridge. I was happy with the bridge but unhappy with the layout ( fiddle yard to fidle yard, a halt with a loop, 1 siding and headshunt) probably because I rushed it a bit and I didn't like spending most of my time using it reversing in the fiddle yard. So I scrapped the layout and chalked it up to experience, I had used several techniques that I hadn't used before (hand built track etc.) I had learnt a lot and it was mostly only track on a board with cardboard mock ups so that was no big deal.
So I went back to the drawing board (Anyrail 5) and after several attempts came up with what seemed the perfect layout for the space I have and the things I am interested in. It was a modified version of Aldeburgh in Suffolk.
Within 20 minutes of finalising my plan I got an email, a friend had received a bad medical diagnosis and was selling his extensive O gauge collection and breaking up his layout.
This layout.
As you can see its GWR/SR so the collection was of not much use to me although at a bargain price. I offered to help him dismantle it and in the process was given one of the branch line sections an SR station called Horton.
Most of the buildings were sold with the locos and stock so I got the platform, cattle dock, coal yard (neither of these last two in the picture), track, point rodding etc. It was permanently installed so had to be cut out into to chunks 3.3m and 2.4m. Behind the retaining wall was a storage yard which was cut off separately so the back of the baseboard (chipboard) and its supports need to be rebuilt. Also I intend to mount it higher it was previously on 850mm legs but I am going with 1050mm.
My task will be to attempt to reconfigure this layout to 1950s ex Great Eastern while its previous owner is still well enough to see it. I think I will call it Wattston-on-sea out of respect to its builder and the track plan reminds me of a straitened and reduced Walton-on-the-Naze.
My intention will be that in a few years time if I can find someone keen into getting into O gauge here in Adelaide, I will give it to them as it has been given to me.
So I went back to the drawing board (Anyrail 5) and after several attempts came up with what seemed the perfect layout for the space I have and the things I am interested in. It was a modified version of Aldeburgh in Suffolk.
Within 20 minutes of finalising my plan I got an email, a friend had received a bad medical diagnosis and was selling his extensive O gauge collection and breaking up his layout.
This layout.
As you can see its GWR/SR so the collection was of not much use to me although at a bargain price. I offered to help him dismantle it and in the process was given one of the branch line sections an SR station called Horton.
Most of the buildings were sold with the locos and stock so I got the platform, cattle dock, coal yard (neither of these last two in the picture), track, point rodding etc. It was permanently installed so had to be cut out into to chunks 3.3m and 2.4m. Behind the retaining wall was a storage yard which was cut off separately so the back of the baseboard (chipboard) and its supports need to be rebuilt. Also I intend to mount it higher it was previously on 850mm legs but I am going with 1050mm.
My task will be to attempt to reconfigure this layout to 1950s ex Great Eastern while its previous owner is still well enough to see it. I think I will call it Wattston-on-sea out of respect to its builder and the track plan reminds me of a straitened and reduced Walton-on-the-Naze.
My intention will be that in a few years time if I can find someone keen into getting into O gauge here in Adelaide, I will give it to them as it has been given to me.
