Hadleigh's Ltd. Sevastopol Works

[Dave]

The start of a new layout, built on baseboards recovered from a recently demolished layout.

I considered building a main line layout, with 1960s BR steam and green diesels, but that idea lasted all of five minutes and I reverted to my usual industrial railway ways.

There will be a Fiddle Yard at each end of this 8ft. x 18in. scenic board. The exchange siding to BR is off to the lower right.

The lower left track goes to a FY with a traverser and both upper LH and RH tracks go to single roads in the FY at a level about and inch and a half above the main FY route.

It's no specific place but will take ideas from various works, such as Forgemasters, Hadfields and the like. It's an idea that I have tried before in two different scales but I was never really happy with them. With the benefit of experience I should get something pleasing to me as the finished layout.

There isn't much to show just yet. Refurbishing the boards and raising their height from the garage floor has been quite a task. It will be perhaps another week before I start laying track.

These photos from one of the previous layouts give an idea of the kind of thing I'm aiming to do, only better this time around.

 

[timbowales]

What do you mean " only better this time"?
There's nothing wrong with that previous layout, in fact it looks pretty darn good, in my opinion

 

[Flaxfield]

Tidy.

 

[Dan Randall]

Love the “glowing“ billet on that wagon - most effective!


Regards

Dan

 

[Dave]

What do you mean " only better this time"?
There's nothing wrong with that previous layout, in fact it looks pretty darn good, in my opinion

It looked good but there were things that I didn't like about it and it didn't make the best use of its 4ft.x2ft. I guess it's like a used car where it looks alright but you look at the logbook and wonder why it's had so many previous owners. It's still around and has been exhibited by two of its three owners since I sold it.

The FY was very much an afterthought and was really just a stick that bolted on the end, which meant having to lift locomotives and stock on and off all the time. It was operationally stunted through coupling/uncoupling issues and overall trackplan.

 

[Dave]

Progress with this layout has been slow. It didn't help that I had to clear everything of the old layout from the boards and that, for some reason that I can neither fathom or remember, I had glued down 9mm ply for some of the trackbed. Removing this, and the scenery, left the baseboard chipped and scarred to such a state that it wasn't possible to lay track directly upon, so I had to lay a layer of ply on top of the boards again.


I was never happy with the height from the ground of the old layout, which was set by cupboards on the garage wall, so this time I made the effort to relocate the cupboards and to raise the baseboards on the frame on which they sit.




The traverser in the LH end FY was damaged during the dismantling and raising of the boards, so this had to have the tracks removed and be rebuilt. It was previously bare wood so I made the effort to slap some paint on it this time around.


I have the lower level track laid and the new deck for the high level has been cut and laid but is not yet fixed in place. The entire thing looks a mess, especially with the remains of the old backscene being still in place. I need to go over all of that with some emulsion paint, to make it all look better. I know that will all be covered eventually but it'll make me feel better about it all. At the moment it's all looking like a very long upward struggle. I hate woodwork and am not very good at it and I'm none too keen on tracklaying and wiring either, so the sooner I can get on to the scenics the better.

 

[Osgood]

The raising blocks girders are a nice touch!

 

[Dave]

The raising blocks girders are a nice touch!

They are a bit of overkill, I must admit.

 

[garethashenden]

They are a bit of overkill, I must admit.

But they add to the industrial atmosphere!

 

[Dave]

I am beginning to feel that I am getting somewhere with this project, now.

The deck for the upper level is all fitted in place and the plywood undercoated. The slots cut in the top level deck are for pits inside and outside of an engine shed. I hadn't planned on putting in a shed but I've not built a layout yet where I've stuck to the original plan. The idea with the shed is to have the short pit (ash pit) outside and the long one is an inspection pit on a road for day to day running. The other road has an inspection pit but this road is more for repairs. The interior will feature a machine shop etc.


The track connecting the two levels is laid and although it is steep, at a 1 in 20, it isn't unrealistic in industrial railway terms and won't be anything that the small engines can't cope with as train lengths are limited to 6 or 7 wagons, due to the size of the FY.

None of the tracks have power to them yet and I am also attempting to get to grips with the new wireless DCC system that will drive all of this. It's damned complicated!

One thing that is simple is the manumatic point operating system, which consists of aluminum tubes and bits of piano wire.

 

[Dave]

The layout is looking better for a coat of emulsion on the backscene. I can picture how it will develop far easier now.
Behind the Barclay, on the lower level, will be the weigh cabin. It will be of brick construction with a flat concrete roof.
In front of the Hawthorn Leslie will be a control cabin, built as the weigh cabin and similar in style to an ARP type signalbox. It will in fact be a signalbox for the works internal movements and those to and from the main line connection but would control only signals and not points.



I have run these locos under their own power for the first movements on the layout. The controller was jury rigged to do so and isn't properly wired in or installed as yet.

The layout name has been changed, too.

 

[Dave]

I really don't want to split the boards and upturn them for wiring, or have to solder underneath the boards. I have used copper tape as the DCC bus before but as the layouts have been single boards it has been stuck under them. This time I have stuck it on top so as to avoid splitting the boards, or soldering upside down.

The tape will be painted over and will be hidden under ballast, scenery etc.

Mock up of bridge/viaduct that will act as the view blocker where the tracks pass through the back scene.

The plate girder bridge that carries the track over the watercourse is scratchbuilt from styrene but needs to be rebuilt, owing to the overuse of MEK having warped the girders.

 

[Dave]

I have been making steady progress with this. There is a lot of heavy civil engineering going on at the RH end of the layout and it's a case of things having to be done in order before the next thing can be done. The watercourse needs to be done before the bridges can be fixed in place because, otherwise, access would be difficult etc.

Reinforced concrete retaining wall and trackbed for upper level.


Viaduct and replacement bridge. None of these things are fixed in place yet.


A start has been made on the water. I am attempting to make it appear deeper on the outside of the bend. On the inside, next to the wall, will be some silt, rocks and detritus, deposited after floods.

 

[Dave]

I spent a lot of time and money on building that viaduct but then scrapped it. I found that a building as a view blocker to the FY entry could be just as effective by the serendipitous placing of the empty box from the layout controller.




And now I have wasted just as much time and materials on building an engine shed that is far too tall and out of proportion.


Now that it's almost finished, and tried in place, I realise what a load of rubbish it is.

Back to the drawing board and back to buying a whole lot more stuff to build a new one.

 

[Shelton Bay]

Having worked in the melting shop at Hadfields East Hecla in the early 80s just before closure all I can say is it looks very clean and cheerful.

 

[Dave]

Having worked in the melting shop at Hadfields East Hecla in the early 80s just before closure all I can say is it looks very clean and cheerful.

The shed or the whole thing?

 

[Shelton Bay]

The shed or the whole thing?

Pretty much everything was filthy. Bear in mind that it was very run down and it was 40 years ago health and safety was almost non existent.

There was a huge hole in the melting shop roof where the 75 ton crane hook went through it after a small incident of the furnace locking pins not engaging, resulting in 30 tons of molten steel being deposited into the pit. The pit crew didn't half shift... Some time later, loops were attached by the welders and my father-in-law attempted to lift it with the crane, the loop didn't hold. When the hook went up, the pit crew were quite close, when it came back down, the pit crew were again down the other end of the shop (no mean feat in wooden clogs).

The locos and wagons were pretty unrecognisable and seemed virtually unmaintained to me.

I really like your model, it brings back some memories.

 

[Dave]

I don't want it to appear too run down and filthy. It's supposed to be the 1950s, not the 80s, but I suppose the nature of these places was to be filthy, so I'll weather each thing as I go. If it doesn't look filthy enough I'll add more.

I'm going to save just the facing long wall from the engine shed and use it as a low-relief building. If I'd known about this kit then I could have saved myself a lot of bother.

I'll cut it down to 3 bays and it should fit the footprint of my own poor effort.

 

[Dave]

I made a start on the forge press building.

 

[Dave]

The forge press building is starting to look the part now.