Coaled Snap!

Here is a snap-shot on the progress of the Coal Depot that occupies the north-west corner of the layout. This really only came about as a result of us wanting to include the Operating Tipper and Conveyor Belt in order to provide us with another location to send our trains. However, it has now become, together with the adjacent Coneyvale Halt, a nice feature and is progressing well especially since, at the weekend, we added a new section of rock walling, seen to the right of the photograph.

This we made by shaping a piece of corrugated cardboard and then forming, on top of that, the rock face by using small pieces of screwed up newspaper covered with landform. Finally this was coated in a layer of polyfilla.

Once this had dried we landscaped it with various paints and scatters etc and let that dry before attaching it to the wall. 

We then keyed it in to the baseboard using more newspaper and landform so that it tapers down nicely to the road behind the station. This is just out of shot in the picture above but I will feature it in a posting next week when, hopefully, this area should be virtually complete.

The Coal Depot itself is not quite finished yet since all the buildings and vehicles have just been placed there for now. We may decide not to have so many as are shown here and we will probably position them differently too. 

It also needs some human activity which we will also be adding this weekend.

The Class 17 (D8568 "Ribble Cement") is the locomotive that will work the Coal Depot sidings and it will also be used to push the coal trucks up the incline to the operating tipper and conveyor. 

These items, I am sure, will be frowned upon by all serious railway modellers but the incline up to the tipper has certainly made an interesting feature and it also provides us with an excellent backdrop at this end of the layout. It does also give us added operational interest and adds to the fun of running the railway which is, surely, what it's all about.