Railex 2024 Aylesbury, Sat 25th, Sun 26th May

I decided to build the pagoda shelter which was on Minehead Platform in the early days of the 20th Century. It was used for Parcels and as a Cloak Room. In the period I'm modelling it was moved to the Goods Yard, when the station building was extended.

Material wise, I used, Slaters corrugated iron sheet which is .5mm thick, 1mm planking sheet, 0.020“ and 0.060” micro strip also from Slaters. Clear sheeting from unknown source, and Windows and Building detail from Wills.

As it is a model of an actual building it was scratch built, although I do have scaled prints of the actual building. The walls and roof were Slaters Corrugated iron. To get the curve on the roof, I cut the shape as near as possible to the size I needed, put it in a mug or plant pot of boiling water, with the correct diameter, then swapped it to the outside and let it cool to shape. I also built some formers in the roof of the building to help with correct shape. Once glued, I just need to file any surplus off. On the building, it looks as though, there was lead flashing on the corners of the roof, I found the best way to represent this was to leave the side edge of the plasticard, which gave a reasonable representation of what it is suppose to be.

With the roof detail, I made the skylight out of clear plastic, part of a window frame and micro strip, I also cut a hole in the roof. the stove chimney is just Wills down pipe. The air vent took a bit longer, I made the base up, got a small piece of round plastic for the centre and some micro strip around the edge. The top, after finding I had nothing suitable, I found a round piece of plastic and tried to get the point on it by using a pencil sharpener, which gave the wrong angle, I eventually used a file to get the point.

The doors and frame are made out of Wills planking sheet. The windows, I found the frames on the wills scenic series, I used clear plastic and for the first time I used, Canopy Glue which was a success. The noticed above the doors, I printed off, using Gil Sans font size 5. Paint was basically light and dark GWR Stone.

I set myself a challenge of building 2 signals, those were Ratio 460 GWR Home signal and the MSE GWR Wooden Post Signal Kit which I have managed to build. It is the first time, I have ever built a signal kit.

I started off with the Ratio Home Signal kit, which went together fairly well and I ended up with what looked like a reasonable example of said prototype and it worked and I was happy with the result of my first ever signal kit. I used mainly Plastic Weld as the glue to join parts together.

I next tried the MSE GWR Wooden Signal Kit, which I felt was up another level. However, I enjoyed the challenge and after putting it next to the Ratio kit when both were finished, you realise it is in a different league and how much more realistic it looks. Although it does say use solder to join parts together, I mainly used superglue. Although the parts are finer and more fiddly. I enjoyed putting them together and got more satisfaction, than the other 2 kits. I glued the lenses in the spectacle plate with canopy glue.