Davemoor Is Once More!

After a hiatus of about two months, during which time we had the Easter holiday, I thought I had better post an update on our progress to date.

As you can see Davemoor is coming along nicely now, after a few false starts which, at times, made us think that the darned station would never be completed!

Well, as of last weekend, the platforms are pretty much finished now and we have started ballasting the track between the platforms.

The station was constructed using wooden supports with hardboard surfaces which then had thin cork laid on top. 

This was then 'painted' in PVA glue, to seal and strengthen it. It was then painted with Phoenix Precision grey paint (P979) before we edged all platforms with our own version of the Metcalfe Platform edging. These were printed on an inkjet printer before gluing them in place with PVA. When this was all done, we painted all platforms, again, with PVA. 

This gave the station surfaces a slightly shinier appearance than was achieved by the paint alone and also helped to seal it and toughen it.

We are still going to have the small industrial unit, seen in the bottom left hand corner of the top photo. This will be fenced off from the rest of the station and has its own loading bay. 

We also decided to use the Bachmann Art Deco station buildings and have already added the main station building as well as the Centre Building on the middle platform. Now we just hope that we can acquire the rest of the buildings to complete it!

Because of space constraints, we decided not to use Bachmann's Art Deco Signal Box and chose use Hornby's version instead. This will, eventually, have interiors fitted since, at the moment, it looks rather empty!

The new Lake End station is also coming along - see Photo 3. The platform was made from pieces of used Skaledale platform sections which we covered in thin cork and painted in the Phoenix Precision paints P979, followed by a coating of the PVA glue.

The small engine shed used here is by Scenix. This has been weathered and has had doors added at both ends, courtesy of Alex at Mikron Models who did an amazing job!

We are not sure if the buildings and canopies, currently seen on this station, will remain here but they give an impression at least.

Finally, in the bottom picture, I took a photograph of our Class 17 hauling a rake of coal wagons beneath the girder bridge, just as the Class 121 'Bubble Car' passes overhead. Clearly there is still a lot more scenery work to be done here - and elsewhere! 

However, once the trackwork at Davemoor is ballasted and cleaned ready for use, we will get back to doing this work!