Hi All,
I know some of you might be familiar with Crook Street, most of the constructional details are over on the GOG forum, but here's a few pictures of the layout as a whole and how it fits into the cellar where it's housed.
It's at a standard of detail where it can be filmed and not look still 'under construction', but there's still loads to do - usual stuff: is a layout ever 'complete'...?
First of all: "The Cellar..."
It wasn't very promising...:
...And then I tanked it (Don't look too hard at the wallpapering - hey, it's a railway room...). That was in 2015:
And here's a fairly recent picture from roughly the same place. It's a wide angle shot so the layout looks bigger than it is. The bare area in the the foreground is where the steelworks will go. Steelworks!!? I hear you say - well just a corner of one - a hint of one... In 1920 steelworks could be quite small not neccessarily the vast complexes of today. Note also the sophisticated film making equipment resting on Deansgate - offcuts of wood and card knocked up into a special hi-tech low-profile mobile phone tray...
:
And here's some earlier shots when Deansgate was still under construction:
And finally, the fiddle yard - all of 6 foot! Nope, I can't run long trains... In prototype reality, trains to the real Crook Street were often divided at Atherton Bag Lane to enable them to surmount the fearsome Chequerbent Bank, officially 1 in 30 but with mining subsidence allegedly more like 1 in 18. 7 wagon trains were commonplace and then often requiring banking.
Anyway, to carry on suspending our disbelief - "which one is ours dear?"...:
If anyone's got any questions or things you'd like to see, just shout.
Cheers
Allan
I know some of you might be familiar with Crook Street, most of the constructional details are over on the GOG forum, but here's a few pictures of the layout as a whole and how it fits into the cellar where it's housed.
It's at a standard of detail where it can be filmed and not look still 'under construction', but there's still loads to do - usual stuff: is a layout ever 'complete'...?
First of all: "The Cellar..."
It wasn't very promising...:
...And then I tanked it (Don't look too hard at the wallpapering - hey, it's a railway room...). That was in 2015:
And here's a fairly recent picture from roughly the same place. It's a wide angle shot so the layout looks bigger than it is. The bare area in the the foreground is where the steelworks will go. Steelworks!!? I hear you say - well just a corner of one - a hint of one... In 1920 steelworks could be quite small not neccessarily the vast complexes of today. Note also the sophisticated film making equipment resting on Deansgate - offcuts of wood and card knocked up into a special hi-tech low-profile mobile phone tray...
:And here's some earlier shots when Deansgate was still under construction:
And finally, the fiddle yard - all of 6 foot! Nope, I can't run long trains... In prototype reality, trains to the real Crook Street were often divided at Atherton Bag Lane to enable them to surmount the fearsome Chequerbent Bank, officially 1 in 30 but with mining subsidence allegedly more like 1 in 18. 7 wagon trains were commonplace and then often requiring banking.
Anyway, to carry on suspending our disbelief - "which one is ours dear?"...:
If anyone's got any questions or things you'd like to see, just shout.
Cheers
Allan
