Warehouse Wednesday - King's Lynn quayside

The last couple of photos from my trip to King's Lynn, this time shots on the quayside. Sadly, my online research has failed to find out much about these very modelable buildings, but I'm in rush tonight, so if anyone can dig anything out, stick it in the comments. 

As a model they have the benefit of bing quite small, and providing a lot of variety in designs. Stick some tracks in front of them, and you have the basis for a nice looking micro layout. Plenty of modelling would be required to do them justice of course.

The custom house id described as "An elegant classical building designed by Henry Bell. Built in 1683 and opened as a merchants exchange in 1685." and is the sort of building any quayside model coupld accomodate. It would make a different scratchbuilding project, perhaps using the Superquick Market Square house as a basis? 

Wittenberg Schafer Loco, body beautiful?

 

I think this loco is really attractive, in an ugly sort of way. Always particial to the more "unusual" prototypes, it was always going to feature on my rolling stock wishlist. My freind Andy thinks it looks like a wardrobe on wheels, but I'll ignore him. 

The body is a simple to assemble MDF item. The only tricky area is the roof, the wood for this needs to pre-curved and the piece in the kit proved stubborn, so I substituted it with a spare bit from our stock. Same thinkness, but much more flexible. 

How did I form the wood? In a set of metal rollers!

I don't understand why, but this technique works pretty well. Every so often there is a cracking noise from the wood, but it survives, and keeps the bend. I'm going to need to tidy the background up before using that photo in print though.

HGLW Wittenberg Schafer Loco - chassis

 

When a blog project morphs into a magazine one...

I've had a Houstoun Gate Locomotive Works kit for the Wittenberg Schafer Loco sitting on the shelf for a few years. Looking for a fun blog project that didn't involve soldering in the heat of the summer, I dragged it to the workbench and started building. 

Then someone dropped out of September's Garden Rail, and I realised that this would fill the space very nicely. Of course, that limits its use on the blog, but I can provide a few tasters, the full step-by-step build (complete with cock-ups) appearing in the magazine. 

Starting with the chassis, this is far more impressive than I had expected. the steel wheels and axles run in proper metal bearings. A pulley and rubber band system give the model four-wheel drive, which should make it very handy for the next "Layout in a day". Those wheels also provide plenty of low-down weight which I hope will help with the wobbly plastic track.