Winter in the Fens - Diddington and Upwell Drove

[Alex W]

I retired at the end of July last year. One of my retirement projects is to refurbish my layout Diddington and the purpose of this thread is to record progress.
Diddington depicts a branch line terminus in East Anglia. A tramway runs from Diddington to Upwell Drove, rather like the Wisbech and Upwell tramway.
I have started work with the terminus at Upwell Drove, which forms a stand alone layout and is booked for a show at Saltash in April.
A few picture of progress so far:
A J70 arrives at Upwell Drove with a train of vans.


The J70 uncouples and runs round it’s train



A pair of fruit vans are shunted in to a siding



A closet look at the J70



Back at Diddington the tramway coach and a Toad E await their next turns of duty

 

[NHY 581]

Hi Alex,

Lovely to see you posting on here. More please.

Rob

 

[Osgood]

Jeeprs, you've captured the winter atmosphere all right, it looks as cold at Upwell Drove as it was here today!

 

[Alex W]

A rather larger visitor at Upwell Drove today. Ivatt 2mt hauls a short freight comprising two BR vans and a brake van.

 

[Terry]

Beautiful! More details please! Scale and Gauge? How have you constructed the buildings?

Terry

 

[Alex W]

Hi Terry
It’s 4mm scale, OO gauge. Buildings are card, with Scalescenes brick paper and Scale Model scenery laser cut slates. I stick a sheet of graph paper to the roof before applying the slates to give me parallel lines to lay the corses to. I’ve attached a further picture of the waiting room which shows the different materials.

 

[Joe's Garage]

One word Alex...."lovely"
Julian

 

[paulc]

I retired at the end of July last year. One of my retirement projects is to refurbish my layout Diddington and the purpose of this thread is to record progress.
Diddington depicts a branch line terminus in East Anglia. A tramway runs from Diddington to Upwell Drove, rather like the Wisbech and Upwell tramway.
I have started work with the terminus at Upwell Drove, which forms a stand alone layout and is booked for a show at Saltash in April.
A few picture of progress so far:
A J70 arrives at Upwell Drove with a train of vans.
View attachment 231246

The J70 uncouples and runs round it’s train

View attachment 231247

A pair of fruit vans are shunted in to a siding

View attachment 231248

A closet look at the J70

View attachment 231249

Back at Diddington the tramway coach and a Toad E await their next turns of duty

View attachment 231250

That is some superb weathering.

 

[Kev G]

Hi Terry
It’s 4mm scale, OO gauge. Buildings are card, with Scalescenes brick paper and Scale Model scenery laser cut slates. I stick a sheet of graph paper to the roof before applying the slates to give me parallel lines to lay the corses to. I’ve attached a further picture of the waiting room which shows the different materials.
View attachment 231438

Love the way the bricks slope out at the bottom of the walls. Not something that you often see modelled.

 

[Terry]

I like the fruit vans. What's their origin Alex?
Terry

 

[Alex W]

I like the fruit vans. What's their origin Alex?
Terry

I like the fruit vans. What's their origin Alex?
Terry

Bachmann. Just changed the couplings and weathered them.

 

[Alex W]

Diddington and Upwell Drove have been electrically reconnected and through running is now possible. Here’s a picture of a class 15 shunting in Diddington yard.


The turntable now works. 46440 is seen being turned before its journey back to Kettering.

 

[Alex W]

One more picture: Class 24 waiting to leave Diddington with a passenger train for Cambridge.

 

[Alex W]

As part of the rebuild of Diddington I required a new signal box.

I have always like platform mounted boxes since I first saw Peter Denny’s Grandborough Junction box in the Railway Modeller in about 1964. My local station growing up was St Ives in Cambridgeshire, which also had a platform mounted box.

The new Diddington box is set in the platform and is based on the St Ives box. As a basis it uses two of the Peco/Wills signal box kits, though externally there isn’t much to see of the original kits! The width is the same, and the pitch of the roof is the same, though much has been clad with Slaters brick plastic sheet and the roof covered with Scale Model Scenery laser cut slates. The window frames use the kit originals, but the top panes have been subdivided with additional glazing bars of 0.4mm plastic rod glued behind the existing frames. The ornamental brickwork and valancing uses laser cut parts from York Modelmaking. A stovepipe chimney was made from brass tube and a fire bucket rack installed by the door. The nameplate is from 10thou plasticard, with lettering from a transfer made by Mark Seward of Blacksmith models. The steps are from the original kit, cut down to fit the new height. This has necessitated the handrails up the steps being remade so that the middle upright in in the centre. The eagle-eyed will notice that I have only done this on one side so far!

The cabin is set in the platform and the locking room will be accessed by a set of steps.







That’s all on the cabin so far. I need to spend some time getting Upwell Drove ready for it’s outing to the Saltash model railway show on 26-27 April.