O Gauge on a budget

A good friend of mine at the railway club had some old O gauge stock given to him some time ago. He recently told me he had 'done a bit of weathering' and what did I think? This 'bit of weathering' was so good I took the following pictures during our running evening and asked him for an article to accompany them. 

It didn't end there though he also inherited a couple of white metal bogies and a chassis frame which we identified  as parts of an old Queen Mary brake van kit. This came back to the club as 'a basic scratch build', which took the drawings for me to spot descrepancies the prototype. This is his article:

"The GW open wagon is scratchbuilt on a Webster chassis. The Queen Mary is scratchbuilt using commercial bogies – make unknown. The vans are kits and the mineral wagons a mix of kits and Triang Big-Big train. The Triangs had the W irons drilled and filed out and the tie bar between the axle boxes removed. Metal wheels were also added.

The scratchbuilt wagon and the Queen Mary were built using 1mm ply (from Mick Charles Models) and card for the open wagon metalwork. These two were sprayed with grey undercoat aerosol and brush painted with Fox transfers added.

The mineral wagons were also sprayed with a grey primer then brush painted all over with a rust colour. This was followed by stippling on Railmatch frame dirt mixed with talcum powder to give a rust texture in random areas but where corrosion is likely to occur. The rust colour was not totally dry so some mixing of the colours occurred. This treatment was also applied to the interior with the darker colour (and plenty of talc) used more at the bottom of the panels, blending to a lighter colour at the top. The top edge is mostly a dark colour, again with plenty of talc. Next I applied Maskol in random areas on the outside and top edge where the rust was to show through. I found it better to apply the Maskol thickly, as although it took longer to dry it was easier to remove. Once dry the model was brush  painted with BR freight grey, all the markings added and the chassis painted with Railmatch weathered black.  When dry the Maskol was peeled away and a final weathering applied to tone down the grey and reduce the contrast between the two areas. This was achieved dry brushing with various paints  and weathering powders. The loads are builders sand and limestone roof chippings on a piece of shaped softboard fixed with PVA."

I hope you were as impressed with my friends rolling stock as I was. To me it clearly shows what can be done with basic materials and old rolling stock. Some would say it doesn't have the fine detail, or the under frame might not be quite right but to me they are far more realistic than a perfectly accurate set of immaculate wagons. And certainly a lot cheaper than £100+ O Guage Queen Mary kit. 

Cardboard City

When I started to consider the scenery I initially painted areas of the board where 

I wanted the various major elements to go, brown for platforms, grey for biuildings and green for fields. To my surprise this immediately highlighted a couple of areas where my vision was not going to work very well, primarily the road running around the inside of the layout. Where the road turned the corner following the inside of the track onto the end of the layout it used all the available space and left no room for buildings. Not very interesting. After some thought I decided to put in a sharp left turn towards the scenic break and place a builders yard in the corner plot. This also had the added advantage of giving me more room on end board for the semidetatched houses I wanted.

I then decided that building simple 3D models of the major scenic elements would give an even better visualisation of the layout, how the various elements would look in place and if they would blended together well. I could have built a reduced scale model of the layout but as it was set up for several months in my mum's garage I decided to build them full size. I had an excellent source of raw material for this as my office uses a lot of photocopy paper and the reams come in thin but sturdy corrugated cardboard boxes. These boxes are held together with very little glue, relying on nylon straps to take the bulk of the weight. So whenever an empty or nearly empty box appeared I would separate the glued ends and flat pack it for transport home. 

The first item I built was the station and platforms, which quickly made me realise just how close the station was going to be the the edge of the layout but did confirm there was just enough room.  

Next was the bridge. I had decided to put this diagonally across the left hand corner of the layout to give  more interest than one directly across the track at right angles. However, the cardboard model presented me with a dilemma. It totally bisected the usable scenic space in two, greatly reducing my options of what to place there. 

Also the road by the station climbs up to the level of the road bridge (the Purley Way) and I was intending to build this, placing some single storely shops on the road for interest. That didn't work either, as the slope and shops almost completely hid the trains from the viewing public for a quarter of the layout. So what was the solution?

My mother suggested moving the bridge towards the station but not quite 90 degrees to the track, this retained a more natural look while giving the corner space back for modelling. The road will remain flat joining the Purley Way slightly off scene so as to not hide the trains but I'm going to keep the single storey shops for interest. Finally I had to admit defeat and do away with the waiting room on the platform opposite the station, as there was just not enough room between the platform and the track in the goods yard behind it. However, it will still have a long canopy similar to the original and other LBSCR stations.

 

Metcalfe kits were used for the engine and goods sheds and I added a foot bridge, terraced housing, and fencing from cardboard. Everything was built very quickly and held toether with no more than Sellotape, pva glue or Pritt Stick. All this effort was well worth it and I now appreciate the advantages when people build scale models of their layouts at the design stage,  just to see how it looks.