Service Area

At the weekend we at last began work in earnest on the Diesel Servicing Depot, as can be seen from the photos above.

Our first job was to create the embankment that will become a disused railway line and this we constructed using polystyrene tiles, land form plaster and a covering of polyfilla. This now forms a useful divide between the depot and the town as well as providing us with another cutting.

The scenario is that this line closed a few years ago and the embankment that carried it has since been truncated - at one end to allow the road to be built and, at the other end, to facilitate the extension of the diesel depot.

The bridge across the depot entrance will have to be weathered and the trackbed suitably overgrown although we do still want it to look like an old railway line rather than just another embankment.

Actually, our first thoughts were to make this into a road but we felt that a disused railway line would be a much better idea and, anyway, it is something that we had always wanted to include in the layout.

We have already laid cork on most of the board but had to extend the board a little to better accommodate the track layout. We will cover this bit with cork as well and then paint the whole area brown prior to laying the track.

Ballast will be kept to a minimum here, as would be the case at such a location, and be predominantly dark brown in colour while the track inside the depot itself will be set in 'concrete' using plasticard.

The pieces of grey card that you can see in the photos depict where where various buildings and depot items such as crane, washer and fuel tanks will be situated. All of these items, so far, being from the Bachmann Scenecraft range - see below:

Modern Servicing Depot

Diesel Fuelling Point

Depot Crane

Fuel Storage Tanks

Modern Washing Plant

Depot Water Tower

Carriage Shed Walkways