More Buildings Taking Shape!

The Christmas Period was as busy as ever with Ice Hockey and seeing family taking up a lot of time.  I did however manage to progress with another building or two on my N Gauge model railway project.

The Large Box with its smaller brother!

The next buildings to take shape saw me build Metcalfe Kit PN133 N Scale Signal Box Set.  This kit comprises of 4 buildings in total, a large LNWR signal box, a smaller version of the signal box, a platelayers hut and a lamp hut.

Once again the kits are very detailed and the instructions are easy to follow.  Although it has to be said that building the steps is quite possibly the hardest thing I have had to do so far as placing each individual step on an N Gauge model is not a straightforward process.

The fully built Metcalfe Signal Box Set!

Luckily though taking my time over a couple of winter afternoons saw me complete the kits and I’m very happy again with the results.

I was also give a couple more sets for christmas which I will build in due course.  Hopefully this year will also see the start of building the baseboards as I actually look to move this project further forward.

Another N Gauge Building Takes Shape!

This weekend saw me complete another of the Metcalfe Models Card Kits for my N Gauge Model Railway Project.

The kit that I completed this time was PN109 -‘Railway Station Buildings’, I must say the kit was superb and really like the little touches, such as the coping stones for the roof and adding the matchsticks to the barge boards to give the building so depth.

As you can see from the images above and below I do have a small amount of excess Uhu Glue that needs removing but overall the model was very easy to put together and looks fantastic.

The structure of the buildings once built is very good with plenty of strength and even though the waiting shelf is a very small building it really does look great!

I look forward to putting both building in place on my layout, once I have a baseboard that is!

A Model Ambition – Getting Back Into A Hobby!

Time for something completely different now as I look at one of my little projects that I hope to get underway shortly.

Coming from a railway family the world of model railways has always been something that I’ve really wanted to get my teeth into.

Watching several excellent YouTube videos from the like of Everard Junction and Glebe Road Junction just fuelled my thinking even more with some fantastic tips and ‘how to’ videos.

My problem though has always been the lack of space to actually put up a layout so naturally starting on in OO gauge is not possible.

When I was a child though my Dad bought me an N Gauge set from the model shop at Steamtown, Southport.  It was a minitrix Duchess set with 2 mk1 coaches, but me being an LNER fan I asked to swap the Duchess for a model of ther greatest loco of them all A4 Mallard.  Luckily they agreed the swap and I still have the loco now, although it is in need for some TLC.

Despite this model though and years of thinking about a layout with my Dad, we never actually got round to building anything, despite having several running sessions.

Over the last few years though I have really started to rediscover some of the things that I once forgot about and one of these was model railways.

I decided to make an effort and actually purchase a few trains, coaches, track and some metcalfe building kits.

I started with just the standard Peco Starter Set Track pack but then after looking through the Set Track Plan book decided to go with the layout plan you can see above and ordered all the track from Hatton’s website.

Having been brought up around the BR Blue era I decided that most of the coaches and loco’s would be from this era but at the same time I wouldn’t just stick to the one era, after all I do love Steam Locomotives and some of the recent releases from both Dapol and Graham Farish are superb.

So what’s next? Well I guess it’s time to get a baseboard built and then put some track down and start to get on with the show.

The big debate I was having was whether to go DCC or not but for my first layout back I think I’ll just stay as things are, maybe go for the DCC once I know what I’m doing.

I have decided though that this one will just be a small layout and having watch ‘Simon’s Shed’ on YouTube, you can see that just starting small can then lead into bigger things once you have confidence.

I look forward to bringing you updates of my layout once things start to progress further.