7mm Birmingham Moor Street

[LarryG]

Glad to see you are back layout building again. 'Y' points can be useful for giving more separation between sidings. When I ripped up the previous O gauge layout, the track never reached the tip because of lock down. A few weeks ago I found three perfectly useable points awaiting the tip!

 

[Focalplane]

Thanks, Larry

I too have a few unneeded turnouts lying around, mostly older Peco ones, but also a double slip which didn’t work out in the hidden loops and was made redundant. It may come in useful one day!

Right now though, track laying should be complete for Moor Street. Track wiring is far from over, though, with a few Tortoises still unwired and some sidings remain inaccessible and “dead”. The traversers are also waiting to be finished, so there’s lots more to do.

There will have to be a test track in Winchester, perhaps a small layout as well? Best not go there!

 

[Focalplane]

The mojo is working! That and a strong breeze has excluded any thought of visiting the beach so there has been more work on the goods station. First I wired the two new sidings and ran a pannier through the two points with no stalling on the still dead frogs. Minerva pickups rock!

Next, the Moor Street book turned up in a stack of literature in the railway room and several photos of the goods station confirmed the loading platforms to have wooden staging. So I built what is a very small representative.



Just to summarize, the pannier and brake van are sitting on Platform 3 road, nearer is the release road from the traverser. Both these are out in the open. The siding with two wagons will be inside the Shed A representation and some freight has been placed on the rather narrow staging. This all needs to be painted and stained.

Another view:



I have also been preparing the brass strips that will form the Shed structural framework. These come coated in varnish so have to be cleaned up before any soldering can be done. I hope to be able to build the frame and then add Plasticard corrugated sheeting. More detailing of the shed will require additional materials which will be sourced when back in the UK.

 

[Focalplane]

I made a start in the goods station building:







The wall adjacent to the release road.

The next pieces will be the roof trusses and the two ends. These will be soldered together as an open sided structure, then the details will be added at some future date.

Compared to the prototype this will be a very small building!

I also did some painting on the goods platform.

 

[Focalplane]

Worked on the roof yesterday evening. Pleased with results, I propped up the frame and went to pick up my phone to take a photo. The frame fell over onto the floor. No photo! Today has been a better day with stronger soldering the emphasis.

 

[Focalplane]

The basic framework for the above ground goods station shed has been completed. It might have been more quickly finished using hardwood but I like brass!

The plastikard cladding can now be tackled but I think some infill framework (not in brass) will be useful.

The photos show some set pieces, just imagine some clothes on the skeleton!

 

[Focalplane]

The Goods Station framework has benefited from an addition brass strip on the roof to separate the eventual fitting of glass panels from roofing material. These items are in short supply until I get back to England and order them to bring back.

So, on with the ballasting. Again I am running out of ballast so an order for more will have to be made later this year. Coarse ballast is not available here as all modelling is done in N or HO gauges/scales.

More reading is proving to be interesting as far as loads to the above ground Goods Station. These were almost entirely perishables destined for the Birmingham markets, all located close to the station along Digbeth (they still are!) Another interesting point is that during annual getaways in July the excursion crowds were given coloured labels and told to assemble in the Goods Station to await calling for each train. Much the same happened on our recent Brittany Ferries channel crossing. We were given a colour label for our car and this was used to stagger the movement of passengers from vehicle to cabin and vica versa. Perhaps because we have a French registered car we were given the Green code which meant we disembarked first! Vive la difference!

But the major ongoing effort is to separate the modelling of locos and coaches (England) from the scenery (France). There will be a car load of modelling tools and loco kits to return to Hampshire, along with other items no longer required in France, some of which are also railway related. Not sure when we will return though.

 

[Focalplane]

A quick 30 second video

 

[Focalplane]

The video above is the first one made since I got an iPhone 11 pro earlier in the year. The quality is definitely better than the old phone.

So I will make a couple more before we leave France. I am still looking for a table top tripod though in order to reduce camera shake.

The sound is OK but some deadening of the baseboard noise would be an improvement. So I need to keep any appropriate packaging to glue on the underside once all the wiring is completed. Foam blocks, polystyrene, etc.

 

[Yorkshire Dave]

The sound is OK but some deadening of the baseboard noise would be an improvement. So I need to keep any appropriate packaging to glue on the underside once all the wiring is completed. Foam blocks, polystyrene, etc.

You could always try something like this used in engine bays - self adhesive and flame retardant.

I've often thought of using something like Dynamat or an automotive sound absorbing mat as a track bed but it's rather expensive.

 

[Focalplane]

Yes, Dynamat would be expensive! I have a wish list for a couple of square meters for my Riley. I would need 20 for Moor Street!

 

[Steph Dale]

It's also flippin' heavy. I use it to help deal with resonances in turntables (record players), but the trick is to pick how much to use and where to put it, not just blanket everything with it. Don't underestimate the effect of the odd shallow saw-cut across resonant panels either; that can do enough to stop a sheet acting like a sounding board.

Steph

 

[Focalplane]

Back to ballasting track until I have no more ballast or scenic cement. The shopping list is growing daily.

I have also been running trains that are not primary stock for Moor Street. The Jubilee 45688 Polyphemus has been running well though it doesn’t like one point which will need some attention. It is currently hauling two ex-LMS coaches built by LarryG which are magnificent as you might imagine. The Ivatt 2MT mogul is also running well but with no sound - I need to check the speaker connections because the other DCC controls are fine.

I also discovered that my Connoisseur 4F needs some repair work so it has been put in the stack of loco projects destined for the UK.

There are still several point motors to be wired up and this really should be the priority except it is a job I don’t relish doing. Strange really because when a point is wired up it provides more satisfaction than most small jobs.

 

[Focalplane]

Another short movie:

The two coaches were assembled and painted by LarryG from Side Lines kits. The Jubilee was made by Lee Marsh.

 

[Focalplane]

I have been messing about with the Goods Station Shed, adding some flesh onto the brass framework. Box wood barge boards, plastikard corrugated panels and a start on the roof.

The roof had glass windows above the interior platform and so I picked out a sheet of styroglass I bought some time ago as the basic roof. This will require picking out individual window frames but will also have the galvanised roofing material glued to it. Some 3D framing will add to the effect.

A mock up of the concept



The white reflection is from an overhead light. The green frog tape is to show where the metal roofing stops and the glass begins. The plan is to glue the paper onto the styroglass, a dodgy procedure at best!

The roof will not be fixed to the structure until the latter is finished and painted. Gutters and down pipes will be attached to the structure below.

 

[Focalplane]

A bit more added to the Goods Station





The representation of the above ground goods shed is tiny compared to the prototype but space is the limitation.

This photo on Warwickshire railways site shows how much bigger the real shed was

Moor Street Station: Internal view of Moor Street stations' upper Goods Shed handling vegetable traffic with an overhead gantry crane in operation

The only piece I am building is the area on the right.

The next walls are those with windows.

 

[Focalplane]

Another short movie:

A few LMS imposters present but then Saltley did eventually take over Moor Street.

 

[Focalplane]

Good progress on the Goods Station building this past weekend. The framework was completed and walls added, them primed and painted a very dark grey to mimic 1950s Birmingham. One colour photo does suggest the walls could have been brown but a smokey brown at best. Windows remain to be made and glazed.

I made a decision to lay cork sheeting over the area to sink the brass foundation level so that the area within the shed could be paved. This was a good decision as the structure is bedded in and doesn’t look plonked down.

The area around the shed was cobbled (as was most of the Bull Ring area to assist horse drawn wagons of which a few still remained when I was a lad). However, I don’t think the Plastikard sheets look at all good. The setts are too perfectly spaced, the cobbles are supposed to be for walls, I think. Is there a better source? I have Giles’ device but this needs a layer of clay and my experiments so far have not been a success. More like a disaster!

I have added some embellishments to the structure to represent some of the girders used but on the whole this is a bare bones building. The roof has yet to be added.







The paint on the paving stones was still wet!

Next, a video overview, when it is uploaded.

 

[Focalplane]

An overview movie

 

[Focalplane]

It pays to plan ahead! At Guildex Telford in 2019 I had a shopping list and one stand where I spent a few shekels was Skytrex. I have started to put these kits together as many of them go with the Goods Station or the platforms of the passenger station. The white metal and resin castings are easy to clean up and spray prime ready for painting. A couple of mini-kits need assembly which was done with Roket Max, now my firm favourite CA glue.

These two white metal trolleys had some minor flash which was easy to clean and then a light application of a small wire brush in the Dremel and they are ready to prime:



They will be vey useful in transporting the baskets of fruit and veg as well as fish when they arrive from Evesham and Grimsby respectively. The fish, as it happens, came via Banbury with its Eastern Region connection to the GWR rather than from the direct line into central Birmingham. So no Eastern Region B1s were seen delivering the herrings.

The transportation of bananas into Moor Street came via South Wales. My research into an old favourite, the Stratford and Midland Joint Railway, demonstrated that London's bananas took a less direct route from South Wales via Stratford-upon-Avon and Towcester. One way to try to try to make the S&MJR profitable I suppose.

Back to the Skytrex accessories, their web site has good "go-by" pictures as well as the castings in the raw. Very useful. Many models can be purchased ready painted, though, and I have one such example from Telford (because they didn't have an unpainted one!):