Merry Christmas (DIY is Over)

Well here we are, Christmas Eve.  The last major house renovation job of the current projects is complete, the hall, stairs and landing are now fully painted and carpeted with only a few minor finishing touches to add.  A huge sigh of relief was heard when the carpet fitters left yesterday afternoon!  With no major DIY tasks planned for the next few months, I could finally undertake the job that bridged the gap between DIY and model making, creating my new cupboard based workbench.

And here it is:

The eagle-eyed will see that it is a little higher than the artists impression from August, as it became obvious through experimentation that a stool was easier to manage in the space than a chair.  This doesn't worry me, it also creates a good height to stand at for quick tasks.

The basis of the new workbench is a piece of timber furniture board from Wickes, which goes against my recycle-where-possible ethos, but seemed a better option than a piece of contiboard or MDF.  It is certainly solid, more so as it is braced underneath with sections of 20 x 15mm timber, sourced from the 'railway department' stash and bearing 30p price tags from the local hardware store's bargain bin!  The same stash provided 9mm quad bead to go around the edges to catch rogue wheels etc from rolling away.  This is very much a work in progress and is currently being varnished to complete the job.

Finally, from the archives, a 2007 view of the Somerthorpe Miniature Railway...

Home

An apt title in more ways than one.  Much focus in the last month has been on home decorating, the recently split-into-two bedroom and nursery are now painted after a couple of marathon sessions and several days of follow-up.  At present I am painting interior doors in what will be the nursery (I get in trouble for calling it my "temporary paintshop"!).

But the other reason it is an apt title currently sits in the corner of that same room....

It's 'Shifting Sands', back from 'Rails to the Sands' at Cleethorpes, bringing along with it a little souvenir of the exhibition in the form of it's interpretation card!  Changes are afoot for the exhibition at Cleethorpes and there may be developments to report in the new year.  For the layout I will be carrying out an electrical testing session soon to ensure all is well (some may call it playing trains...)

Today was the last regular operating day of the 2011 season at Cleethorpes and despite a damp start, the day turned out sunny and not too cold, warm enough to enjoy a ride in a Sutton Miniature Railway open coach behind 'Sutton Belle'.

Elsewhere on the railway work is underway on locos and rolling stock ready for the santa specials in December and the 2012 season, which will mark the 21st year of operation by Chris Shaw and the present company.

Secrets of the Railway Cupboard Part 2 - The Big Secret!

Two months ago I let readers of the blog into my railway cupboard, which quite frankly, despite all my hard work painting it, looked more than a little untidy once refilled.  However, two months ago now seems like a very long time ago... Life has changed.

A fortnight ago my wife announced that there will be a new arrival in the Peake household in the first quarter of 2012 (and no, not from Hornby).  Yes, we are expecting a baby!  Due to this there has to be a major re-organisation of our "living quarters" and the original, mark 1 plans for a railway room/study have been dusted off, typex applied and 'Nursery' added instead.  Of course this has a major impact on my intended scheme for an alcove based desk and possible test track above.  Indeed, the alcove itself will be no more as the chimney breast will have give way to make more space in the bedroom.

And it will be a bedroom only, no space really for model trains.  Or will there...?

Plans are afoot to re-organise the Railway Cupboard to provide some additional shelving (white) and a built-in but lift-out workbench (yellow).  Granted, there will have to be some ruthless clearing out of the "someday and maybe" projects, and all those things on the shelves that shouldn't be will have to go elsewhere, but there is a chance it could work.  Things have to change whatever happens, time and pennies will be in short supply in the months/years to come so a carefully planned approach is required.  I'm still working on that...

Secrets of the Railway Cupboard

So, as revealed in Sunday's post, the planned railway room was knocked on the head by a combination of cost and common sense.  I'll admit there followed some dark days full of contemplation, soul searching, potential sales lists and listening to to The Smiths... (OK, some of that might not be true, I certainly didn't manage to find the Smiths CD).  Perhaps I really felt that something had to change or give in modelling terms in order to carry on?

Whilst I'm still working on how to provide more space for layout building in the future, I at least have allocated work space (and a grand plan to use it) and I still have my storage facility.  Enter the railway cupboard (though not literally as you are likely to stub your toe!).  Our house is blessed with two walk-in wardrobes/closets and the one in the main bedroom has been the railway cupboard for many years.  Over that time random shelves have been added and I'd got it pretty much to suit my needs.  However, most of the paint and some of the plaster were falling off the wall and the gloss woodwork was going a sour cream shade.  So bad in fact, that I didn't take a 'before' picture to go with this 'after' one:

Refurbished Railway Cupboard.

As a summary of work completed, I removed a false ceiling at door frame height and all but one shelf; the middle rear shelf is original, those above and below are copies in the original architrave support/floorboard plank style; side shelves are pine on recycled brackets; the ceiling was papered (over the cracks!) and painted; the walls have been patch plastered, filled, base-coated and emulsioned; skirting and shelves primed and painted in water based satin (for speed) and the door frame primed and glossed. To finish off the floor has been covered with hardboard followed by self-adhesive vinyl planks.  Despite an injection of capital from the 'modelling fund' to buy some timber and the flooring, I've made as much use of left overs and recycled material and left over paint as I can to keep costs down.  Almost looks to good to put anything in there!

But I did....

Rather full!

To be honest there is more in there than usual, the contents of two stacking crates and everything to the left hand side on the floor is usually on or under the workbench, and will hopefully be out there again soon.  In usual form 'Shifting Sands' would sit on the left in it's storage box, taking up about 28" x 11".  I have made careful provision for storage of larger items in the refurbished cupboard, the lower shelf is over 4' from the floor, allowing me to store timber and perhaps one day a 4' long baseboard end-on.  Unfortunately there's a long way to go before we get to that stage, and there still might not be enough floor space to make it work.

So one thing that did occur to me was whether 'Shifting Samds' could be rebuilt in a format that took up less storage floorspace?  This would actually be a return to the very early days of the design when the idea was that almost everything over fence/figure height would be removable for storage and the board stored in under 6" depth.  I produced another of my composite doodles to see how it might look with a few of the bulkier buildings removed:

A less visually bulky, reduced height 'Shifting Sands'

The ice cream van makes another appearance (I do actually have the model in store), along with a camper van, also from Oxford Diecast.  The removeable backscene would be reduced in height to the line just visible sketched behind the vehicles.  A new, lighter weight, storage box would be made to complete the transformation.  Something does appeal to me about the simplicity of this arrangement, but echoing back to my previous posting, would it again be tinkering and diluting a proven concept?

The Deformation of Shifting Sands?

This is the first of at least a few posts where I hope to update readers of the current progress of railway related issues chez Peake, from the practicalities of railway modelling in the family home to dealing with ongoing building and decorating work.  Plus, some of my present random thoughts on layout design may be included.

As many readers may know, we are presently having a lot of work done on the house (or doing it ourselves) and this has caused railway modelling to fall to the wayside for both practical and time reasons.  Practical in that a lot of things have to be moved around and stored in places they wouldn't usually be found, and time wise... well someone has to do the painting and other work!

One thing I had hoped to gain through the various works underway was a proper 'railway room' of my own.  My workbench has sat in the corner of the bedroom for several years and a separate work area and layout building space was planned.  This would have been created by splitting the bedroom in two with a new (very short) corridor serving the new rooms:

Railway room ('Study') to the right.

Alas, several factors have seen that this won't be happening.  Firstly, the railway room got smaller as the plans went on, it would have been 5' 6" x 7' 3" in the final version, as to cut the costs I had decided to retain the chimney breast in the main room, hence needed more space in there.  This would really have left the railway room too small to be practical, despite the attractive 7' 3" wall to build a layout against.  There was a factor here as 'Shifting Sands' is 2' deep and needs operating space around it at home.  It just wouldn't have fit.  But what if it could have been straightened out and incorporated into a home layout?

Shifting Sands extended (to fit 7' 6" x 6' 6" room) - lower sketch is later thinking.

At 18" wide this would have still intruded into the room some way, the lower sketch shows how the board could have been tapered to be less intrusive.  Cutting up the layout in this way would have been tricky to say the least but I pushed on with the thinking, drawing up this illustration to prove to myself it was possible, I saved this as the 'lines of indecision'!:

White lines - existing edges and centre; blue line - existing backscene base; red lines - new baseboard edges.

Finally I had an artistic moment and created a composite image or how the layout could look with the backscene moved and the line straightened off, I think I might have left the old line crossing the road in typical re-aligned miniature railway fashion.  The ice cream parlour is replaced by an Oxford Diecast ice cream van, so no worries about the supply of the cold stuff on those blustery Lincolnshire days...:

What might have been - the deformation of Shifting Sands.

Fans of 'Shifting Sands' will be pleased to hear that this isn't happening, indeed, despite other ideas to rebuild the layout (of which more anon.) I think things will remain as they are on the layout's return home, sometimes a concept works best first time and subsequent tinkering can dilute and ruin a layout's design and impact.

The main reason the railway room won't be happening is slippage in the renovation budget.  A couple of other jobs have come in over and above what I had predicted (hoped) they would and this has led to me to reconsider this project, despite some additional funding being available from the 'modelling fund'.  However, plans are afoot to create a new, custom work area once redecoration is complete, and in the mean time I have made some progress elsewhere which improves life for the little folk.  More next time....