While the somewhat uninteresting work behind the scenes for taking Brettell Road out was going on I did distract myself from it with a few road vehicles to maintain a semblance of sanity.
The Leyland Beaver milk tank I’ve featured before in an unfinished state. It had kind of stalled for a while but now I have finished it off. This is a Langley Models kit.
On the subject of Langley models I picked up this 4 wheel dolly from ebay for next to nothing. Thinking it looked like the sort of thing that could be found lying around at a steelworks, I though it would make a nice bit of background clutter.
On to New Street – These 2 are 3d printed kits from CMAC Models. On the left a VW and on the right a Lada Riva Estate. Nice kits, I recommend them.
Ive recently managed to get myself involved in one of Iain Rice’s old layouts, Cades Green. The layout has been rescued by the Norfolk area group of the Scalefour society and turned from a home layout into an exhibit-able one. Its first show in its revised form was at Scaleforum back in September. One thing that stood out to me were the road vehicles, not only was there a bus on a bridge but they were tipped straight from a box! I guess Iain never managed to get round to them?
Given that they were straight from a box, and Iain hadn’t done anything to them, there weren’t any real qualms in me taking them away to have a fiddle. Its not like I would be messing with Iains work after all. The above is an Oxford Diecast Commer van given the basic treatment of darkening the window frames and a bit of weathering. I changed the tyres as the originals went all sticky. Ive had this happen before and it seems completely random as to why it does. Any ideas?
Next up the offending bus on a bridge – Original Omnibus Bristol L5. There was a bit more to do to this one. The glazing was just too far recessed for the black edge trick to work on its own, so that would all need to be redone. The wheels where a nice rendition of the type found on a Routemaster but not right for an L5 . There were no indicators or tail lights and the destination box was nothing more that printed on. Results are below.
Links
CMAC Models (Ive linked to their Ebay page as they seem to have more stuff on there than their website)
On Brettell Road I have mostly used cast white metal vacuum pipes. Generally these have been fine but I have had some of the bufferbeam mounted ones break as they are slightly vulnerable. David Roome has now produced some 3d printed ones that are rubbery and a lot less susceptible to knocks. Im not replacing them on all of my wagons just as and when a white metal one gets broken.
In just under a months time Brettell Road will make its return to the exhibition world with a local visit to the 
Pony truck axlebox and springs along with some of the under cab pipework. One of the small AWS cylinders can be seen on the footplate
The last backscene is now in place so the road in the middle of the layout now gives the impression it goes somewhere. The Leyland Steer seems to have lost its licence plate somewhere.
The little back yard on board 2 is done – I wanted a used but not particularly looked after feel.
I realised I’ve not actually taken any images of this building in its finished state before now.
Princess Margaret heads back to the Wallows for the evening.
GWR railcar catches the last of the sun as it heads off to Dudley.
My Back scenes have been printed onto self adhesive vinyl and most of them mounted to the boards. Just the last one still to do. I used a local company who kindly did a couple of test prints so i could tweak the colours. Anyone local to Stourbridge area who are after something similar I can highly recommend them – 
Above is the basic drawing of a typical industrial shed. Think of it like a kit of parts. This is done in Adobe Illustrator and the rather bright colours are simply so that they are easily selectable at the next stage.
Which is to transfer the basic drawing to Photoshop where Scalescenes textures are overlaid and the bits ‘assembled’ into something resembling a basic 3d building. You will note theres no shading and no perspective yet. 
A different building showing some shading and some perspective. The image is still made up of separate parts in a folder so that I can fine tune it once applied to the finished backscene.
Of which this is the end board for the left of the layout. Some consideration, such as the metal fence, needs to be made for elements of the layout that will cross from the 3d world to the 2d one. The line the railway takes, under the bridge on the left is hinted at by the arrangement of the trees.
This is the view of the bottom of the hill on the left. Again the wall and the building on the right of the image are intended to match up with the 3d model.
And finally the middle bit of the 2 new boards. Based on images of the real Round Oak. Of course the point of all this is that its there but not really all that noticeable at the same time.
Ive mentioned before that enlarging Brettell Road would mean I need to build new fiddleyards. The reason for this is the way the cassette system worked was to have a recess in the board which given that the layout is now 2 tracks meant the old ones couldn’t really be made to fit. I also took the opportunity to make some improvements and the result can be seen above.
View from the front. I decided that the Round Oak industrials running on the mainline was a no-no, so now they will appear from the right of the layout behind the warehouse. As the mainline drops away this means that i needed a different level for this bit.
Pictured are the loco and unit versions. The base is 9mm MDF this time.
The little bits on the inner ends are for rudimentary buffer stops. This stops the trains running off the end but also adds a little security when lifting the cassettes so that nothing rolls off.
The way they connect is a tweak on my original design of using a bit of flat bottom rail on its side – positioned in the web of the running rail for alignment and electrical connection. Originally these were both sides and the rails on the cassettes were angled outwards a little for a good fit. Making the loco cassettes reversible main this wouldn’t work and so a small bit of 0.6 straight wire is soldered to the inside of the web to help with alignment.
Taking a hint from Amlwch (a layout i used to help out with) I decided to make the storage of the cassettes integrated with the fiddleyards. This one will store the locos and units, the other one the long cassettes. Most of the braces slot in place meaning I can lock in place 8 unit cassettes with just 3 bolts and 16 loco cassettes with just 2. The less time spent faffing about at an exhibition the better!