7mm Sedbergh Town

OzzyO

Western Thunderer
I've just had a quick look on the web for roller blinds, you can get 48" X 96" for approx. £83.

OzzyO.
 

Stuart D

Active Member
I've just had a quick look on the web for roller blinds, you can get 48" X 96" for approx. £83.

OzzyO.
That's good to know, thanks for looking it up.
I ran a finger over the roofs of some coaches half expecting to see a bit of dust on the finger or a mark on the roof; no sign of either, although the coaches will have been on the layout, uncovered, for best part of two years now. My supposition that the room is relatively dust-free seems to be confirmed, so I'll not bother with covers for the time being. Putting a carpet down though would probably warrant a re-think - but that's for the future, maybe....
 

Stuart D

Active Member
It's been a while....
Progress has been rather intermittent over the winter, and most of what I've been doing still seem to be in the category of 'part-finished projects'. But I have (almost) finished the cattle dock and the bridges that form a scenic break at one end of the station, and will try and get some photos done shortly. I've also been re-assessing the stock that I have and making some final decisions about what I really need for Sedbergh Town and reached the (probably inevitable) conclusion that I have a quite a few things that are superfluous, and certainly some kits that I will never get around to building. It's surprising what you acquire sometimes! At least that will let me concentrate on the buildings and scenery which I really do need to take forward if I'm going to maintain enthusiasm for the whole project, which is beginning to feel a bit daunting at times.
Anyway, I'll try and get some more photos up here in the next few days.
 

Stuart D

Active Member
Progress is still almost non-existent.....
However, I have found time to have a fairly major re-think about the layout. The layout for Sedbergh Town was a by-product of my first idea for a railway based on the LMNJR and utilised almost the same track configuration, because that was already laid and included a number of custom-built points to suit. But it always niggled me that the curvature at each end of the station was in the totally opposite direction to what would have occurred in the real topography, and this was partly to put the mainline scenic section on the Hawes side of the station so it could incorporate a short viaduct over the River Rawthey. Now, we always have to put up with much sharper radius curves than the prototype would have used, but I do prefer that they at least go in roughly the right direction. So I made the simple but quite drastic decision to reverse the geographical orientation of the station, and the only significant casualty of this decision is that the mainline scenic section is now in the direction of the Ingleton line, and does not require a viaduct. That pesky viaduct had become something of a proverbial albatross, and a big contributor to my feeling that I would never get it built and my wondering whether the whole project was simply 'too much' and should be abandoned; the fact that this was entirely self-imposed was by the by! One added plus-point is that the narrow gauge line now exits the station in an altogether more plausible direction.
I can now concentrate on working on the station side without constantly thinking about just how much more work there will still be left to do on the other side of the room. It does feel slightly more achievable.
So to avoid any confusion in any future postings here is the revised plan, which in truth has only involved a few changes in the wording :
sedberghtown-2021.png
 

Stuart D

Active Member
And to show that I have managed some slight progress, here's a picture of the bridges that provide the scenic break at one end of the station.
SG-NG-bridges.jpg
There's still a lot to do by way of 'finishing' - the hedges have yet to be trimmed/hacked into shape, and the railings on the bridge over the NG line are just loosely in place and need to be painted and fixed in position. Likewise some of the walling which is being recycled and needs to be touched up, and all the adjoining ground needs to be built up of course.
Curiously the right-hand section of backboard is painted in exactly the same colour as the left-hand one! Isn't photography wonderful....
 

Stuart D

Active Member
Despite making some slight progress I finally decided to call it a day. Sedbergh Town is an abandoned railway. Not only was I feeling overwhelmed by everything that needed doing, but I also realised that operationally it was not as enjoyable as I had hoped. It really is a club layout, or at least one that would benefit from having two or three operators.
I have spent the last several weeks considering alternatives that would make use of the station area more or less as is, and also draw on the same back-story. Various possibilities have emerged, and I'm now finalising what I think will work best for a solo operator. The one certainty is that it will be end-to-end; given the room size that still allows for a decent length of run.
So, there will be no more postings under this thread.........
 

simond

Western Thunderer
Stuart,

your call, of course, but I would suggest that getting a few mates round and running some trains might give you the motivation to continue.

my ambition is a model, something like yours but based in Wales, for which I have much of the required stock, a trackplan, and the locoshed built as a module to attach to the layout. What I do not have (yet) is the extension in which to build it.

My experience of larger layouts is that the builder funds it and does much of the work, but it is the crew who make it live. Having got so far, it seems a great shame to rip it up and start again. Four block instruments and a few pals…
 

LarryG

Western Thunderer
I agree: If your heart's not in it, pull the plug. In my admittedly few short years of building layouts, I found it very difficult to make something that was truly satisfying.
 

Phil O

Western Thunderer
I would be tempted to leave the circle of track with a small terminus coming off of it and an opposing fiddle yard, so that you can just run trains if you fancy it and to run locos in on, but can also run fiddleyard to terminus. It's definitely a case of less is more.
 
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