Aylesbury Junction

Actually the conductor rails don't go through the goods shed it's just a trick of the light. They stopped short rather like at Rickmansworth but in any case the shed has now gone from there - it was only to prove the concept and general dimensions etc in the space I had.

I had so much to do on the layout that I decided I'd treat myself and almost finish some small areas as incentive to carry on.

The goods shed has since grown and been relocated. I created a cameo of a recently-disused coal yard, and the electrified storage siding has been slightly extened to get a 4-car set in.

No trains in this pic but hopefully it still conveys some atmosphere. Note that on the Metropolitan, coal staithes were usually made of horizontal sleepers and not vertical ones like most lines.



The wires between the concrete posts are EZ line from an American shop on ebay. In close up, the leaning posts and breaks in wire seem amazingly to have occurred in reasonably prototypical fashion! Some you win....

Hmm, looks really good!

Every time I see someone elses efforts I get itchy modelling fingers. Every time I get itchy modelling fingers I get grief from the wife! That is an excellent start and I cannot wait to see further progress. As for doing the 50s, I'm with Metman. When I finally start my own it wil be firmly based in the late 50s/early-mid 60s, It was a fascinating era for stock, not just EMUs either. Keep up the good work and keep posting the pictures as they will inspire the rest of us (particularly me!) to actually get some baseboards built!

Always good to see another fellow railway modeller modelling the tube- Is layout DC or DCC control?

You will be getting a Class 501 next maybe? ;D

Xerces Fobe

I'm valiantly trying to finish a 2-HAP before the inevitable Bachmann announcement in January. Mine is built using Bachmann short suburbans with DC kits cabs and other bits to make them up to the correct length. I would have built the DC kit in its entireity but I baulked at the thought of all of the etched door hinges! I'm also building a 4-EPB (53XX) the same way. This has Bachmann short suburban motor cars made up to length the same way as the HAP with Replica 64' suburbans suitably modified as centre trailers. The same principle could be used for a 501 but I am sure that Xercesfobe will put you right with those. His 501s are superb! I wouldn't bank on Bachmann doing one but then you never know.

Love the observation about the coal staithes on the MET. That was a new one on me. DD is educational in the extreme! What plans do you have for further stock to build?

By the time we settled in the house that we knew we were going to stay in our first Daughter had arrived. Since then she has been followed by another two so modelling time is at a premium. My loft will provide an 18' X 12' sanctuary from when they hit their teens! I'm also planning to do a show layout (don't tell the wife!) loosely based on the District/Piccadilly. I'm looking at starting the basebaords early in the new year. That was a dangerous thing to say as I know now that certain people here will now keep nagging me about my progress I the same way that I have been nagging them (no names mentioned Metman.... Ooops! ).

Superb! Keep 'em coming. I love the idea of filling in the corner of the layout with a bay platform. One corner of mine will have a disused branch going into it. The Hornby 'Skaledale' iron bridge in the last pic looks good 'in situ'. I have one as they are identical to some of the bridges on the Reading to Basingstoke line. Some of the cast resin stuff from Hornby and Bachmann saves a load of time building kits these days. Even some of the 'Thomas' range from Hornby would look good on any layout. The station building looks like it has continental origins but also resembles some on the Southern such as at Chertsey, St Denys and Netley.

These fingers are getting mighty itchy.....

Yeah I know.....

I had couple of months off due to Christmas and a bout of illness, but then set to work on the station forecourt on the BR side.

As the A stock still hasn’t arrived, steam-hauled Dreadnoughts are still working into this side, to allow the locos to run round.

This was the situation 19Nov 2010 showing the area to be worked on, with a skeleton incline for the bridge - in true Blue Peter fashion with a cardboard base. Fortunately I had enough room to make a slope of about 1 in 7 which doesn’t seem too steep and toylike.



Now, 3 months later I’ve surprised myself and done something which I can leave, and come back to later. The building still needs weathering, and signage, and people, and and and and and…..



The 3/4qtr angle looks like this:


The tree is by Ceynix as I’ve not got the skills or patience to do this kind of tree yet. The single deck Bristol really belongs the other side of London but I like the general feel of it, until I can replace it with something more suitable. Fortunately the Weymann bodied STL’s were based at Garston so this suits the geographic area.

A closer view of the edge of the bridge incline 19Nov 2010:


An aerial view of the completed (for now) area 25Feb 2011:


I’m not a rivet counter but I wasn’t happy with the plastic ‘wire’ that comes with the Ratio fence posts, so I bought some EZ line from USA which I think gives a better impression. I stopped taking my medication for a while and thought it would be a good idea to add some weeds at the bottom of the fence posts made from plumber’s hemp. Remind me to file bright ideas away next time….have had to double the dosage on my medication after this.


Am hoping to get to Acton on the Saturday. The layout won’t be with me – it’s very mixed fixed.

It is rather inspiring! Gives me one too many a reason to model...

I actually bought them made up from Radley Models.

IIRC they use(d) British Leyland Oxford Brown?

I think Metman makes models for Radley? Hopefully he can suggest what they're using now.

(I was a bit surprised at the time that I was the first customer who'd asked for red ends on the brakes. Have since discovered I need to add pickup beams to the brake end bogies, but not the 'inside' ones. Apparently they had these to prevent gapping when coupled to the Met Bo-Bo's and most (but not all!) Dreadnought brakes had these).

One of the jobs that got interrupted by the summer break was building a goods shed for Aylesbury Junction.

You may recall the ancestry is that the line was built by Metropolitan and LNWR jointly. My skills aren’t up to completely scratch-building and in any case I couldn’t find anything that quite fitted. I certainly didn’t want the usual offerings from Superquick, Scaledale etc.

I stumbled on an American shed by Walthers, where the end profile seemed to fit the latter years of LNWR just pre-grouping. It was a little larger than I really wanted so the fact it was HO was an advantage.

The trouble was, the roof was ‘wooden’ and also the kit was a deleted item. After some searching I managed to find a UK shop which had it (except their stock system showed it in stock when it wasn’t and they took the money….)

A couple of months later I managed to find another UK shop that actually had it, so I could finally make a start at the end of last winter.

The main changes in anglicising it were to create a tiled roof, some ‘glass’ roof lights, and alter the canopy over the rail siding to make it more English.



The proposition is that the shed was hurriedly built towards the end of WW1 when Aylesbury Town was incredibly busy and congested. Needless to say the war ended as soon as the structure was built and it remained something of a white elephant, never fully realising its potential.

The roof tiles were Slaters buff coloured pavement slabs, painted with a wash of Humbrol matt grey 87 using Genuine Turps as a thinner which I felt gave a good shade for cheap slate. Everything else was painted/weathered using acrylics and powders.


The ‘rooflight’ section caused me some angst as I’ve never seen models of dirty glass represented quite the way I wanted. Eventually I settled on Wills batten sheets dusted with grey and black powders. Over these I then ran deep runs of PVA between the ribs, and left a couple of days to dry. After several experiments these seemed to give a kind of dirty glass effect, especially when over-brushed with further dark powders.

The walls were dry brushed with terra cotta powders, and then over-brushed with Tamiya acrylic weathering powder for the darker shading. I’ve tried to achieve a late 50’s/early 60’s look of a building which has an air of inevitability about it.



The base is Railmatch concrete, over-brushed with more Tamiya powders to get shading and runs. The seam around the bottom of the shed should disappear when the building is finally fettled into ground cover. The corrugated roofing over the rail platform canopy was taken from another Walthers kit to keep in scale.



‘Well weathered white’ on some windows and bargeboards was achieved by painting with Railmatch concrete, over-painted with Polly Scale Aged White to try and achieve the rundown effect.

Below is a general view of the shed and its juxtaposition with the station and yard - hopefully it will all come together in due course as the landscaping gets done.

That looks ace!

Your layout is coming along nicely. Keep up the good work

XF